


Solanum Dulcamara

by NerdInResidency



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Castles, Flowers, M/M, Princes & Princesses, Royalty, i'll probably add more characters to the list later, i'm a math nerd i don't do all this history shit, jeez i'm so bad at tagging lmao, speaking of history i should be studying ww2 battles but i wrote this instead, this isn't historically accurate at all sue me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2018-10-08 05:38:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 51,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10379670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerdInResidency/pseuds/NerdInResidency
Summary: After the disappearance of his father, a palace gardener, Brendon Urie is raised alongside Prince Ryan and Princess Elizabeth of the kingdom of Trepidius, in the castle of their father, King George II. But, although the castle is beautiful and the surrounding property luxurious, as secrets begin to unfold, Brendon realizes that perhaps the world outside, as well as the truths hidden in the walls, are not so pleasant, and the ideas of good and evil he's been brought up to believe in might not be not be as black and white as he thinks.





	1. Prologue: There Are Secrets in the Night

**~**

It is night.

In a far off land, a lone bird soars over a sleeping countryside, its sleek body momentarily blotting out small clusters of stars as it passes them. The night is dark and moonless, and it seems as if the entire world is frozen in time. Not even a gentle breeze disrupts the stillness; not a single leaf breaks free from a branch and flutters away from its companions, or even rustles. Indeed, the forest below the bird is completely silent, and a human onlooker would probably describe it as eerie. Luckily, birds are much less agitated by quietude than people typically are, and it glides peacefully on, to a destination known only to the creature itself. 

Eventually, the trees thin out, and the surrounding landscape becomes one of the gently sloping hills, blanketed with long blades of wild grass like hopeful arms reaching up to try and catch the stars that bestrew the otherwise empty sky above. It is beautiful, indubitably so, but the bird is (so unlike that the fanciful mind of a human) unaffected by the sight, and simply continues along at a steady pace.

Soon, it reaches yet another scene, though this time, it is made by man instead of nature. Nestled between a collection of hills that it is just beginning to spill over the crests of lies a little village; a cluster of cozy little houses and shops, complete with an assortment of both cobblestone and dirt roads. Even here, it is completely tranquil, although if the bird were to fly lower it would undoubtedly hear soft snores emanating from within the surrounding buildings. Not that it matters, as the bird does not stray from its path.

The main road of the village, a wide ribbon of painstakingly-lain cobblestone, continues off into the hills even past the last building along it, and, likely by mere coincidence, the bird follows it. The road snakes over a few more hills until, just when it seems it will stretch on forever and into oblivion, it widens out so as to match the breadth of a massive pair of gates that stands halfway up a particularly large based hill.

Connected to these gates is an even more prodigious stone wall, easily thirty feet tall, which forms a large circle that encloses an enormous property, encompassing almost the entirety of the large hill, as well as a good portion of the flatter land surrounding it. But of course, it is not the size of the area that makes it so impressive, but the building on it.

It is a castle, in every sense of the word. As one would expect such a structure to be, it’s massive- bigger than anything most people will likely ever see in their entire lives, and made of bricks of a fortune’s worth of imported white marble, of all things, which would normally reflect the moonlight and create the illusion of almost glowing in the dark. Tonight, though, with only the stars as illumination, it looks much more worldly, though still breathtaking in its architecture.

The main part of the building is triangular, with the broad side facing the gates and sporting a set of huge wooden doors, carved with intricate, vine-like patterns that, despite being clearly ancient, look newly touched up. A trio of tall spires sprout up from the corners of it and climb even higher than the defensive wall, so high that the bird has to swerve so as not to crash into one as it passes them. 

The grounds behind the castle are just as ostentatious. Here lies a garden, filled with seemingly every variety of flower in existence, and clearly just for show, as produce is, of course, delivered by wagon from the village. It’s a beautiful place, with slate walkways creating a maze of pathways through the brightly-colored flora, and stone benches scattered about near the most visually appealing arrangements.

A dirt path, appearing to have been worn into the ground by years of heavy boots frequenting it, leads away from the garden and towards a small, round cottage. And it is above this cottage that, as the bird gracefully flaps its wings, a single tail feather breaks free and flutters down towards the ground, passing one of the windows as it does so.

And it is through that window that there is evidence, although not even the bird will ever discover it, that the world is not, in fact, completely still, as although every lamp in the cottage has been snuffed out for the night, the flame of a single, lit candle casts shadows on the walls, which seem to move with the dancing flame.

As it turns out, the world is not completely silent, either, as a hushed rustling noise sounds from inside the room as well. Indeed, beside that candle stands a man, though only his silhouette is visible in the dark. And on the table in front of him is a leather bag, which serves as the source of the rustling noise as the man swiftly packs various items into it. In goes a spare tunic, a pair of socks, a hat, half a loaf of bread, and...

The man’s hand halts momentarily, hovering over the next item lined up on the table: a simple kitchen knife, most of its shine gone from years of use cutting vegetables, but still functional, and recently sharpened. He gazes down at it, his chest rising and falling with a single, contemplative breath, before grabbing the handle and shoving it into the bag. Without further ado, the man pulls the bag closed and is halfway through swinging it over his shoulder when he freezes at the sound of a drowsy voice on the other side of the room, where a small bed is positioned against the wall.

“Dad?” the floorboards creak as the owner of the voice, a wide-eyed young boy, gets out of bed and continues to watch his father curiously, “are you… going somewhere?”

The man sighs, running a hand through his hair. He kneels down in front of the boy so they are eye level, although the child is almost tall enough that he doesn’t need to do so anymore. “It’s not safe here for me anymore,” he replies, clearly at a loss when trying to explain his predicament without worrying his son, “I have to go.”

“But it’s safe for me?” the boy argues, crossing his skinny arms over his chest tenaciously.

The man sighs again and rests his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “You’ll be alright. The prince likes you, and the… the people that are after me have no quarrel with you.”

“But who are they?” the boy persists, “you’re not explaining anything!” His voice is climbing in pitch, and he is clearly distressed at the thought of losing his father.

“I can’t tell you that,” the man says, “all you have to understand is that I can’t stay here.” He stands up and starts towards the door.

The boy is silent for a few seconds, and it is only as his father begins to swing the door open that he speaks again, his voice trembling. “Will… will you be back? Once whoever it is goes away?”

The man doesn’t return his son’s gaze as he replies with a simple, gruff, “Maybe,” in a tone that really means “probably not.” Then, without another word, he steps out into the brisk night air, and the door eases closed behind him.

The boy stares after him for a moment, not quite comprehending the gravity of what just happened. Then, he climbs back under the covers and shuts his eyes. Soon, the only evidence that there was ever any movement in the cottage at all is the single flame of the candle, which both the hurried man and the confused boy forgot to snuff out.

The world is, once again, completely still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *knows that ao3 doesn't have a way to put covers on fics but makes one anyway*  
> Hiii I'm Emma and congrats, you just read this thing that I wrote yay.  
> Next update will be whenever I feel like it bc I'm trash and can't stick to schedules  
> Thanks for reading :)  
> Also feel free to comment/leave kudos bc I'm a lonely attention whore :))


	2. I: A Candle Flame; A Lantern Light

Brendon hugged his knees to his chest, trying to ignore how uncomfortable the hard back of the wardrobe felt as he pressed his spine against it. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if disabling one sense would help him focus more on hearing, which was a much more crucial one at the moment. But despite his efforts, no matter how hard he strained, he found himself rendered incapable of detecting any noise over the urgent pounding of his own heartbeat.

He mouthed a silent curse and leaned his head back until it rested against the wood. The space smelled old; the air was stuffy and musty, and had clearly been trapped in the wardrobe for a very long time. It really didn't help the already claustrophobia-inducing atmosphere created by the rather impressive collection of long-forgotten coats and hats that hung from the closet rod. In what could be construed as, depending on the overall outlook on life of the beholder, an act of either sudden brilliance or desperation, he yanked the closest coat, which happened to be a large fur one, so long that it brushed the tops of his knees from where it hung, and draped it over himself as another layer of hiding. Of course, if anyone were to open the wardrobe in search of Brendon, the first place they'd look would probably be under the suspiciously shaped mound of fur in the corner, but it at least made him feel better protected, if nothing else.

Okay, so maybe it was purely desperation.

Alas, the mustiness of the coat turned out to make the rest of the wardrobe feel like an open field in comparison, and Brendon could feel the dust creeping into his lungs with every inhale. He brought one hand up to his mouth to provide at least a little bit of protection from it. However, the ability to breathe comfortably soon proved to be not much of a concern, because it was at that moment that his ears actually did manage to pick up the foreboding sound of footsteps echoing off the stone walls of the corridor outside, and he resorted to holding his breath altogether.

The sound grew louder and louder, and it wasn't thirty seconds later that there was a creaking noise, signaling that the age-old wooden door of the storeroom had been pushed open. Brendon clamped his other hand on top of the first one as if to muffle the noises he already wasn't making.

There were a few more footsteps as his pursuer entered fully into the room. Then, they stopped, and Brendon pulled his legs in even closer to his chest, as if he were trying to fold in on himself and cease to exist altogether.

He was almost thankful when the eerie silence was broken, even if the source of the voice that broke it was, of course, the cause of the apprehension in the first place. "I know you're in here," the speaker said, and Brendon couldn't help but feel a little offended by how bored the words sounded. However, he bit back the urge to enunciate that frustration, and instead simply pressed his hands harder against his mouth until he felt the insides of his lips grind against his teeth. There were a few more moments of silence before the speaker continued, "I asked one of the guards."

Brendon's eyes snapped open, and his hands flew away from his mouth almost on their own accord. "You rotten coxcomb!" he exclaimed, throwing the coat aside indignantly.

Hardly a second later, the dark interior of the wardrobe was flooded with light, and the annoyingly apathetic face of Prince Ryan Ross III of Trepidius peering in at Brendon's crouched form. "Found you."

Brendon jumped up indignantly, and in doing so nearly bumped his head on the ceiling (could a piece of furniture have a ceiling?) of the wardrobe. He was much more careful as he climbed out of the cramped space, though his movements were still distinctly irate. “It doesn’t count when you’re a _cheater_ ,” he argued, attempting to brush off some of the dust that now practically coated his trousers.

Ryan pulled an innocent face, although Brendon could see the amusement in his eyes. "And how did I cheat, exactly?”

Brendon let out an incredulous snort. “Getting help is definitely cheating. Not to mention it was _paid_ help.”

“But I didn’t get help.” Ryan was still much too dignified for something as blatantly conceited as a smirk (or, at least, that’s how he chose to view himself), but his expression definitely held that not-quite-smug attitude that never failed to piss Brendon off as he crossed his arms and watched Brendon try to process that statement, which mostly resulted in a bout of frustrated spluttering.

“You literally just said-”

Ryan shrugged and plopped down on a rolled-up tapestry that had been placed rather inexplicably in the center of the room. “I walked around saying that in every room until you responded,” he said, and, although his body language was minuscule nonchalant, it was infuriatingly clear just how pleased with himself he really was, “It’s not my fault you’re so predictable.”

Brendon stared at him for a moment, the realization that he had been tricked slowly dawning on him. He crossed his arms and shook his head slowly. “I hate you, you know that? I actually hate you.”

Ryan picked at a loose thread of the tapestry, not even bothering to look at Brendon, although his disinterest was clearly purposeful. If there was anything Ryan was good at, it was getting on Brendon’s nerves. “Careful now, or I could have you arrested for treason,” he said smoothly.

Brendon scoffed and sat down beside him on the tapestry. “As if you’d last five days without me to constantly entertain you.”

“Whatever helps you justify the copious amounts of leisure time you allow yourself.”

“I do my work!”

“Eventually.”

They engaged in an unannounced staring contest for a few moments, Brendon glowering like an angry bull at Ryan’s still-calm face. But if Brendon was a bull, Ryan was a stone wall, standing tall, impenetrable, and completely inexpressive. Not that that meant he automatically won every argument. Certainly not. Heck, walls weren’t even allowed to participate in bullfights, so, by default, that meant the bull would win every time, simply by having no competitors.

Ryan seemed to come to that same conclusion and dropped his arms to his sides in defeat. Or perhaps it was simply out of boredom, as staring at someone and watching them stare back at you is certainly not a very engaging activity, but no. It was definitely defeat. He blew a stray curl out of his face and took to letting his eyes gaze around the room, taking in the various chests and crates of god-knows-what piled up against the walls, all covered in a thick layer of dust. Brendon had only vaguely remembered this room existing at all when he had stumbled upon it, and it appeared to be the same for everyone else in the castle.

“So, your turn to hide?” Brendon said after a moment, deciding to drop the argument, because, although surrendering was quite painful to his pride, arguing with Ryan was, true to the earlier metaphor, like trying to talk a wall into moving out of your way.

Ryan shook his head. “This game is getting boring.” He finally looked at Brendon, and now his gaze seemed almost too intense, almost scrutinizing. There really was no happy medium when it came to Ryan. “There’s dust in your hair,” he said.

Brendon shook his head rather violently from side to side a few times, hoping to dislodge some of the clingy gray sediment. “Is it gone?” he asked.

“No,” Ryan replied. “Here.” Before Brendon had time to react, he reached out a hand and began to comb his fingers through Brendon’s hair with surprising gentleness.

It wasn’t as if they’d never touched before; far from it, seeing as how they’d grown up together. And it wasn’t even as if Ryan were moving particularly slowly, as people always seemed to in so-called “meaningful” moments. But somehow, instances like this one always seemed to take Brendon by surprise. Perhaps it was just subconsciously odd to see Ryan actually acknowledging other people’s existence on the same plane as his own.

Unsure how to react, Brendon chose simply not to. He tried to meet Ryan’s eyes, but found them to be fixed completely on whatever minuscule particles of dust there were finding, so he instead settled on staring intently at Ryan’s prominent jaw.

Ryan’s fingers swept through his bangs, and a shower of said particles fell onto Brendon’s cheeks like snowflakes. He figured he should probably say something, perhaps a snarky tease about the uncharacteristic tenderness of Ryan’s current behavior (although he knew the only reply he would get would be a quick withdrawal and sarcastic “what, would you rather I pull your hair out instead?” or something of the like), but before he could figure out exactly what that something was, the door creaked open again, and in stepped none other than Spencer Smith, Ryan’s main servant and, as Ryan called him, "designated pain in the ass" of six years (although, if you asked pretty much anyone else, Spencer was not the bothersome one in the equation).

After the strangely loaded stillness in the room, Spencer’s arrival felt like a sudden flurry of activity, though really all he was doing was striding into the room with a determined expression on his face, as if he had other duties to attend to and wanted to get this encounter over with as efficiently as possible. “Ryan, your dad wants you in the throne room to talk battle strategy- oh, don’t tell me you’re doing this with him now, are you?” he said, halting and gesturing to Brendon wearily when he noticed the somewhat intimate positioning of Ryan’s hand.

Ryan froze momentarily but quickly regained his annoyingly well-maintained composure. “And if I was?” he challenged, dark eyes sparkling with mischief as he danced his fingers lightly away from Brendon’s bangs and down his cheekbone, even leaning in a little bit closer to make his point.

Spencer rolled his eyes, having become accustomed to Ryan’s games long ago. “It wouldn’t change the fact that the fair and mighty King of Trepidius sent me to come get you, I’d appreciate if you walked there like a normal person instead of making me carry you.”

Ryan shrugged and glanced disinterestedly up at the ceiling. “If my father wants to speak to me so badly, he can come find me himself.”

“It’s like you _want_ me to lose my job,” Spencer muttered, seemingly more to himself than to Ryan. “Alright, are you going to come with me willingly, or not?”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Why can’t he just go over whatever brilliant new plans he’s come up with with Z instead? She’s the one who’s actually going to be in charge of these things someday.”

“Yeah, well, you’re free to take that one up with him yourself, because I’m not arguing with royalty on your behalf. In fact, how about we go to the throne room and you can do it right now.”

“And leave poor Brendon here all alone? Now, what kind of a man would that make me, hm?” Ryan replied, in that same tone of mock-innocence he had used when revealing his trickery (which Brendon, for the record, still considered to be cheating) a few minutes before.

“One who is benevolent enough to ensure that his beloved Gentleman of the Bedchamber isn’t sent packing by sundown,” Spencer said firmly. He reached down and took ahold of Ryan’s arm, forcing him into a standing position and attempting to drag him towards the door.

Ryan planted his feet on the ground but didn’t try to escape Spencer’s grip. Instead, he scoffed, “As I’ve told you before, that title implies status, of which you have none.”  
“Yeah, yeah,” Spencer replied, waving a hand in the air dismissively, as if to bat away the comment, despite knowing it was, as it happens, completely factual, “Tell me that again tonight, when you find cockroaches nesting underneath your pillow.” With that, he dropped Ryan’s arm and strode out of the room.

Ryan’s eyes went wide, and he looked back at Brendon, his face a mask of utter horror. What seemed like not even half a second later, he had bolted from the room, and his running footsteps seemed to shake the entire wing of the castle as he chased Spencer down the corridor, having clearly forgotten his earlier insistence to stubbornly remain in the storeroom. Brendon stayed there for a while, sitting on the tapestry listening with more than a little amusement (unlike Ryan, he wasn’t so composed as to hesitate to show smugness) to pounding footfalls and still-audible shouts of “you wouldn’t dare!” and “that’s treason, you know!” sounding from the hall.

When the noise finally faded, either through distance or by Spencer successfully luring Ryan into the throne room, Brendon got up and headed outside, as, despite Ryan’s claims, he really did have a job to do as the palace gardener. The last frost had melted only about a week ago, and now he had even more work than usual, seeing as it was officially growing season.

**< <>>**

In the ever-blurring memories of his childhood, Brendon recalled the garden as nothing short of a wonderland under his father’s care. Though most of these recollections were more like vague notions of enjoyment than specific moments, he did remember a distinct vibrancy, with decorative plants of every species and color reaching up towards the sun like starving men within reach of a banquet. There were even a few fragments of actual occurrences that he could still recall with surprising clarity: a young Ryan spitting out a mouthful of pond water as he glowered at Z, who stood on the shore, laughing hysterically; a slightly older Ryan, crouched beside him behind a blossoming pink rosebush and staring intently at a robin that was plucking a worm from the dew-freshened ground only a couple of feet away. He even had one of the late queen of Trepidius herself, seated gracefully on one of the many benches placed at strategic intervals around the garden, twirling a single red rose, which her husband must have plucked for her, between two slender fingers. These memories were almost like paintings; simply frozen pictures in time that had for some reason stuck in his mind, but they were undoubtedly beautiful, and so, Bredon concluded, the rest of the garden must have been as well.

Now, Brendon simply tried his best. The garden looked rather barren at the moment, seeing as winter had only just ended, but by summer everything would be blooming again, and it would be presentable. Perhaps not the thriving jungle of exotic hues his father had always created, but it would be nice, with a cluster of lilies leaning gracefully out over the pond, numerous varieties of rose bushes scattered about. Good enough for the King to take guests into, or for Z to watch butterflies in, or for Ryan to trample on and then pretend he hadn’t noticed at all. He knelt down in front of an empty plot along one of the slate pathways leading through the soon-to-be foliage, beside which he had placed a basket of hydrangea bulbs earlier in the day before Ryan had sought him out for entertainment.

Speaking of Ryan, Brendon had only managed to get around three bulbs planted when noticed a long-legged shadow on the soil a few inches away from where he was working that definitely hadn’t been there before. Brendon kept his eyes on the dirt so as to hide his smirk, although he didn’t bother trying to keep the amusement out of his voice when he asked, ”So how was hanging out with your father?”

Ryan huffed and moved to sit down in the exact center of the flower bed. Depending on how one perceived his motives, Ryan had either the worst or the best sense of placement and what positioning would give someone the most trouble. He snatched a hydrangea bulb from the basket and began tossing it from hand to hand as if it were a ball. “Boring, as always,” he replied. ‘Of course, I shouldn’t be telling you about it at all, what with all the highly classified battle plans we spoke about.”

“No, you really shouldn’t,” Brendon agreed, fighting to suppress the instinctual curiosity he knew Ryan was trying to play off of, “And anyway, you did say it was boring.” He plunged two fingers into the dirt and used the digits to approximate the correct depth for a bulb, still displaying a clearly stronger interest in his work than in Ryan, although internally all he wanted to do was look up.

Ryan seemed surprised at Brendon’s feigned apathy, but definitely not in the defeated way Brendon had hoped for. It was more as if he were excited at the unexpected challenge. “Yes, it was really nothing you’d be interested in. Just a few lessons on how best to distribute troops, talk of new ways to boost morale, you know.” Ryan let go of the bulb, and let it land with a small pat on the soil in front of him. “Oh, and how the rebels are still growing in numbers, and he fears they might attack soon.”

Brendon’s hand froze over the pile of bulbs, which he knew Ryan would view as a surrender, but he didn’t really care at the moment. “You should be more serious about that, you know,” he said, his tone making the statement sound like a warning.

When Ryan replied, all the playful cheekiness was gone from his voice, and he sounded almost offended at the implication of his insensitivity. His words, as well, seemed to just toe the edge of sounding like a threat. “You aren’t the only one who lost a parent to them, Bren.”

The words left unspoken were clear: _you’d do best to remember that._

Brendon looked up to meet Ryan’s eyes, which were boring into him with a disconcerting amount of intensity. Still, Brendon stared straight back into their fierce depths, refusing to relent. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt minutely proud of himself for doing so, as he doubted there were many people in the world willing to stand their ground against a prince or even criticize his behavior in the first place. For reasons unknown, Ryan had never been able to truly intimidate Brendon.

Just when Brendon was starting to think he truly would have to be the one to stand down, if only because he felt the wind beginning to pick up and didn’t particularly want to be held responsible for Ryan getting frostbite (which was incredibly unlikely, but if anyone could manage to contract frostbite in the middle of April, it would definitely be him), Ryan sat back and flicked his gaze away from Brendon’s and up to the darkening sky. “Dinner should be ready soon. I assume you’ll be joining us?” he said, uncrossing his legs in preparation to stand up.

Brendon blinked at the change of subject, but truthfully wasn’t all that surprised by it. “As soon as I finish up with this patch,” he replied, gesturing vaguely at the plot of dirt Ryan had oh-so-conveniently decided to sit on. Ryan nodded and headed down the path to the back door of the castle without another word. After watching his receding figure for a few moments, Brendon shook his head, as if to clear it, and picked up the next bulb.

The sun was setting, the earth under Brendon’s fingernails smelled fresh and fertile, and all was well in the kingdom of Trepidius.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i forgot to put it in the last chapter but make sure to follow me on tumblr if you enjoy humor, ryden gifs, and the occasional mental breakdown :)  
> anyway, thanks for reading, and _wow_ you guys were so nice in the comments on the last chapter. This fic is so far getting way more attention than I expected (i know 59 hits isn't actually an impressive amount by any standards, but i haven't really posted and planned to continue a fic since like 2 years ago when i was 13 and wrote bad doctor who stories on fanfiction.net)  
>  i'm on spring break this week, so hopefully i'll be able to get more writing done than usual. I'm really bad with update schedules, but I'm gonna aim to have the next chapter up by friday


	3. II: The Story Ensuing Would Never Be Told

Brendon was not, by any means, a religious person, but if there was one time of day he had to choose as holy, it would definitely be mornings. There was just something sacred in them; a unique sense of tranquility and restfulness felt only in those dew-sprinkled hours surrounding the sunrise.

Granted, that feeling of peace may have been greatly due to the fact that he was typically sound asleep during those early hours, but hey. He could still find them nice in theory, right?  
Regardless, he was right in the middle of enjoying one such episode of restfulness when he was interrupted by a series of loud knocks on his front door. Staring blearily up at the ceiling of the cottage, he momentarily considered simply ignoring the caller and returning to his oh-so-important morning ritual, but decided against it, as he did, after all, live on the grounds of a castle, and for all he knew the knock could be someone sent to warn him that it was under siege. Sure, it was unlikely, mostly because Brendon was pretty sure that, were the castle indeed being attacked, the gardener would likely be the last person anyone would think to warn, but you never know. Perhaps there was a guard with a particular penchant for perennials.

Of course, when Brendon finally managed to drag himself out of bed and across the room to peek through the window in the door, he found no closeted flower enthusiast in shining armor. No, the person standing outside wasn't a night at all, but a servant. Brendon sighed, annoyed at having been woken up, but swung the door open anyway, figuring that, hey, there was still a chance of the castle walls being bombarded with cannonballs at that moment (although they'd have to be suspiciously quiet cannonballs. People who have just woken up are not known for their rationality). "Is the world ending?" he asked bluntly, not yet awake enough to sound particularly upset at the prospect.

"Depends on how strictly you define the phrase," Spencer replied with a slightly amused glimmer in his eyes, "two thirds of the royal family want you in the solar.”

“The sun isn’t even up yet!” Brendon protested, gesturing towards the decidedly gray sky visible behind Spencer’s head.

“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, Prince Ryan is the equivalent of an oversized toddler with an adult’s vocabulary, so I really wouldn’t expect much rationality from him if I were you.”

Brendon nearly made some incredulous statement about the ridiculousness of Ryan even being up at this hour (judging from the biting air and strange dullness of what little of the outside world he could see at the moment, the sun hadn't even made substantial progress over the horizon yet), before remembering that it was, in fact, Ryan that they were talking about. If he found out the guy hadn't closed his eyes at all in the past five years, Brendon would not be all that surprised. Instead, he sighed and ran a hand through his hair, feeling his fingers catch on a few tangles. "Give me ten minutes."

Spencer nodded, and Brendon retreated back into his cottage and proceeded to lie back down for eight of those minutes before dragging himself over to the barrel of water in the corner, splashing some on his face, and throwing on a fresh tunic. He stepped outside to find Spencer still standing a few feet away from the cabin, gazing down at a scattering of pink columbine growing along one side of the house. When Brendon cleared his throat, he looked up at him and gestured to the flowers. "These are nice," he said, though it sounded as if it were meant as more of a statement of fact than a compliment, "your father planted them, didn't he?"

Brendon looked down at the flowers and nodded. "He did. This patch is some of his last surviving work, actually. Columbine’s a hardy perennial." He couldn't help but smile faintly, recalling the image of his father kneeling over this very patch, his brow glistening with sweat and hands stained with dirt as he painstakingly made sure each seed was sufficiently covered.

Spencer followed Brendon's gaze, and, although he obviously didn't have the same memories surrounding them to conjure as Brendon did, he seemed to understand. "He was a good man."  
"Yes. I mean, from what I remember." Near the end of the sentence, Brendon's voice became slightly disheartened, as he remembered that, although it was a fond recollection, the memory of his father planting the tulips was tinged with the blurred edges of age, and he would never get the chance to form another one.

It was then that Spencer turned his focus away from the flowers to look fully at Brendon. "Do you ever wonder why the rebels would bother to hunt down a gardener?" he asked, and, for some reason, the question seemed much more weighted than a simple musing.

Brendon knitted his brows, unsure as to why Spencer would be asking such a question. "He was quite close to the king, wasn't he? Surely they planned to use that relationship to their advantage?"

Spencer's gaze lingered on him for a few seconds, and it seemed oddly calculating, causing Brendon to feel rather uncomfortable. But just when he began to consider asking what this was all about, Spencer looked back down at the flowers. "Of course. Quite right." He turned away from the cottage and towards the looming figure of the castle. "Shall we go, then? We wouldn’t want to keep royalty waiting," he said, his tone just mocking enough to be noticeable.

Brendon let his gaze linger on Spencer for a second, still unnerved by his odd behavior, but soon decided to drop it. “Certainly not,” he said, the same ghost of a smirk visible on Spencer’s face appearing on his as well. With that, the pair set turned and set off across the grounds and towards the garden, planning to enter the castle through the door that led to it, as that was the closest entrance.

To the right of the garden door, there was a second back door to the castle, this one leading to the kitchens. A parallel set of dirt lines, worn into the grass over the years by countless delivery wagons, formed a path leading up to that door, which curved from the front of the castle and around the left side, meaning that, in order to reach the kitchen door, it had to cut through the small stretch of land between the garden and Brendon’s cottage.

Just as Brendon and Spencer were nearing this path, there was a cry of “look out!” and they turned their heads to see a wagon, drawn by a clearly out-of-control horse, barreling towards them, its panicked driver motioning frantically for them to get out of the way. Less than a second later, the wagon was right in front of them, and Brendon had just noticed that the driver was, in fact, a dark-haired girl who appeared to be around his age when she yanked hard on the reins, causing the horse to rear up and tip the wagon just enough for her to tumble out of it and land with a thud on the ground below.

Brendon rushed over to the scene immediately, calling out a worried, “Are you okay?” as he as he approached. Once he had reached the girl, who was moving into a sitting position, he stuck out a hand to help her up. When she only stared warily at it, he thrust it even further forward. “I’m Brendon,” he offered, thinking that perhaps telling her his name would somehow humanize him in her eyes and make him appear less intimidating than he apparently did.

The girl continued to eye the outstretched hand cautiously, and, instead of taking it, dug the heels of her hands into the ground and pushed herself into a standing position on her own. Brendon rather awkwardly brought his hand back down to his side and watched as the girl went around to the back of the wagon and began to pick up the burlap sacks, labeled in big, brown lettering with the names of various food items, that had tumbled off the back when the horse reared. “Here, let me help you with that,” he said, stepping towards a sack labeled “Potatoes” that had landed a few feet away.

Just as he was about to pick it up, however, the girl snatched the bag away and tossed it onto the wagon with the others. “I can get it. Don’t you have a chandelier to go polish or something?” she said, and there was clear irritation in her voice, though Brendon wasn’t sure why.

“Not really,” he replied, “I mean, I’m supposed to be entertaining the prince, but he’ll accuse me of being late no matter how fast I get there, so it really doesn’t matter if I actually am.” It was only after that statement that Brendon realized that perhaps talking about his relationship with royalty sounded a bit like bragging, and hurried to change the subject. “What’s your name?” he asked, which, in hindsight, was perhaps not the best question to ask someone who was clearly wary of him, but it was the first thing he came up with.

The girl turned away from the wagon to face Brendon directly for the first time since the conversation started. The eyes that looked him up and down were large, almost abnormally so, but not in a bad way- she was, in fact, quite pretty, despite the dew-moistened clumps of dirt that had latched onto her skin, dress, and hair during her fall. “Sarah,” she said finally, after what felt like an eternity of scrutinization.

“Sarah,” Brendon repeated. The name tasted somehow new on his tongue, and he was fairly certain he’d never heard of any servant girls named Sarah around the castle. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before,” he said, his voice beginning to quicken with excitement at the prospect of having a new arrival in the castle, which was, despite the size of the staff, a rather rare occurrence, “are you new? Because I’d be happy to show you around if you are. I’d imagine the castle seems pretty daunting at first, but it’s really-”

As he spoke, Sarah had turned back to the wagon and loaded on the last sack. “I’ve been making weekly deliveries here since I learned to control a horse,” she said, cutting off Brendon’s excited offer, “if you’ve never seen me, it’s probably because you castle folk are always too busy sleeping in on your imported silk sheets to notice.”

Still eager to befriend her, Brendon let the clear hostility in her tone wash right over his head. “Oh, so you’re from town?” he asked, referring to the small village located a few hills away which was considered the capital of Trepidius, if only due to its immediate proximity to the castle, “How is it there? I used to go to festivals there as a kid, but I haven’t been back since…” he trailed off momentarily, then cleared his throat. “Do you still have those festivals?” he asked, his words slightly slower, although his tone stayed bright.

Sarah let out a harsh laugh, as if Brendon’s words had referenced some sort of irony-based joke that he wasn’t in on. “Oh yeah,” she replied, “festivals. We have tons of those. Out on the filthy streets, among all the beggars and cutpurses. You should come sometime.”

Brendon fell silent, and before he could even comprehend the implications of what he had just heard, much less come up with a response to such a statement, Sarah was climbing back up to her seat on the front of the wagon. Without another word, she flicked the reins and continued down the path towards the kitchens, and Brendon could only stare bewilderedly after her.

He stood there beside the path for a good minute, replaying Sarah’s words and strange hostility towards “castle folk” over and over in his head, before he was shaken out of his trance by a nudge on his shoulder. He whipped his head around, startled, to find Spencer, who he had forgotten had been waiting patiently a few feet away through the entire encounter, standing beside him. “We should go,” Spencer said, gesturing towards the castle, “Prince Ryan may be self-absorbed as all get out, but he probably will notice if you don’t show up at all.”

Brendon gazed down the path again. By now, Sarah had made it to the kitchen door and was, with the help of a few of the kitchen staff, unloading the sacks and carrying them inside to be stored. Then, he looked back at Spencer and shook his head to clear it. “Right, yeah. Of course,” he said, banishing any distractedness from his voice and starting off towards the castle with Spencer in tow.

They’d gotten all the way through the garden and were just about to open the heavy castle door before Sarah’s voice started to creep back into Brendon’s head. Her words swept through his mind like a whisper on the wind, and he couldn’t stop sifting through them as if enough repetition would eventually trigger some sort of understanding of them that he clearly didn’t possess at the moment. “Spence,” he said finally as the two made their way down one of the countless green-carpeted hallways in the castle, “have you been to town recently?” He asked the question nonchalantly and fixed his eyes on the empty helmet of a nearby coat of armor on display so as to further the notion that the question was merely small talk.

“Can’t say I have,” Spencer replied, “I don’t really have a need to, living in the castle and all. Why?”

“Oh, no reason,” Brendon said mildly, “just, y’know, started thinking about it, I guess. I’m thinking I might like to go sometime.”

_Out on the filthy streets…_

**< <>>**

Spencer and Brendon parted ways soon after they entered the private wing of the castle, as Spencer apparently had business to attend to in Ryan’s room, which was down a different hallway than the Solar.  
The voices of Trepidius’ favorite (and only) prince and princess carried down the otherwise silent halls of the castle like wind over flat land, and Brendon was within earshot of their conversation long before the entrance to the Solar was even close to his line of sight. It was Ryan’s voice he heard first, and Brendon could tell from the sheer (and very familiar) adamancy of his tone that he was arguing some viewpoint or another before he even started registering the actual words that were spoken. “He walks like a _duck_! At least Prince Gabriel knows how to use his legs correctly.”

“But have you _smelled_ his breath?” Z’s reply was unwavering, and Brendon could almost see the indignant expression on her face. “Because I most certainly have, and it’s awful. I’d much rather marry a duck that smells like a person than a person who smells like a duck.”

“But could you imagine the coronation? Him waddling up to the throne beside you?”

“Oh, now you’re exaggerating!”

Ryan continued on his tangent, ignoring his sister’s objections. “And if he’s that incompetent with his movements when simply walking, I can’t imagine what he’d be like in b-”

“Ryan!” Z exclaimed. It sounded as if she meant to scold him for the improper remark, but the effect was greatly lessened by the fact that she was laughing at the same time.

Her tinkling giggles were still when Brendon entered the room. The scene inside was nearly identical to the one he pictured: Ryan and Z sat on the cushioned bench in the center of the room, angling themselves more and more towards one another with each rebuttal. They both looked relaxed- Z was wearing one of her simplest dresses (which was, of course, still made of an expensive lavender-colored silk and embroidered with an ivy leaf pattern, but it didn’t appear to have any jewels attached), and Ryan’s long curls were rumpled and clearly unstyled, despite being a symbol of his princely status. This was the royal family Brendon had grown up with: a pair of siblings who, despite being ridiculously pretentious at times, had never been anything but comrades to Brendon.

Still, he couldn’t seem to shake the unnerving thought that Sarah, and perhaps many more of the townspeople, did not seem to share this perception.

Ryan unfurled his wiry arms in a half-mocking welcome as Brendon lowered himself into a chair facing the bench. Despite the early awakening, he appeared quite energized (not that Brendon was all that surprised). “Brendon, so nice of you to finally turn up,” he drawled, “I was just telling Z here how awful her taste in men is. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I never said I particularly like him,” Z interjected before Brendon had time to inquire as to exactly which prince of Z’s seemingly endless list of possible suitors they were debating about, “he’s just the best possible choice, that’s all. Do you have any better suggestions?” She got up on her knees and turned to face her brother in order to look down at him with an eyebrow raised in challenge, knowing he wouldn’t have a sufficient rebuttal.

Ryan, however, didn’t falter in his argument. “I already told you. Prince Gabriel. He’s tall, he’s tan, he’s got nice arms…”

Z rolled her eyes and returned to a seated position on the bench. “And I guarantee that if you only knew how he smells, you wouldn’t have such a big crush on him.”

“Hey.” The sharp, not-quite-warning came from Spencer, who had appeared in the doorway as Z was speaking.

“Oh c’mon, Spence, Ryan said, and although his tone remained relatively light, there was a definite weight to it, as if he were issuing a warning of his own, like the verbal equivalent prodding someone with a sheathed sword. “There aren’t any secrets here.”

Choosing to abandon the argument, as there really was no winning against Ryan, even with a strong, logical case on your side, Spencer simply sighed and waved a wooden hairbrush, which had been holding at his side, vaguely in Ryan’s direction. “You’ll be having breakfast soon. Sit still,” he said, moving to stand behind where Ryan was seated on the bench.

Ryan leaned his head back, probably just to maintain his reputation of never bending to anyone’s will, but wasn’t invested enough to resist when Spencer pushed it forward again. Meanwhile, Z picked absentmindedly at the delicate embroidery on her dress, clearly not possessing any desire to continue the duck argument. With the two youngest members of the royal family in a moment of somewhat rare silence, Brendon decided it would be a good time to try fishing for some answers to at least a few of the numerous questions that had been plaguing his mind like a swarm of hungry mosquitos since his earlier encounter with Sarah. He made sure to keep his tone nonchalant and his gaze resting lazily on nothing in particular when he asked, “Have either of you been into town lately?”

He had been slightly worried that Spencer would mention how he had asked him the exact same question no more than half an hour before, which would ruin the guise of it being mere absent-minded curiosity. If Spencer did draw the connection, though, he didn’t visibly react and simply continued to detangle Ryan’s hair.

Ryan thought for a moment, and (much to Spencer’s annoyance) turned his head towards Z, as if she might remember something he didn’t (which was unlikely; Ryan was the one with the uncanny ability to remember perceived wrongdoings long after they faded from the minds of the people who actually committed them). “We went once when we were young. I don’t remember much of it, though.”  
Brendon nodded, though he made sure the reaction appeared only vaguely interested, so as not to sound suspicious. “How do you think the people are?” he asked. He practically held his breath after saying it, although he didn’t know why he was so nervous. After all, there was no law against wondering about the world outside the castle walls, was there?

And yet somehow he instinctually felt that he should keep Sarah’s words, and even the fact that she had interacted with him at all, a secret. Though they were close in proximity and often directly influenced by one another, the castle and town were two vastly different worlds, and the residents of each didn’t often interact. Because of this, Brendon attributed his strange inclination to hide his true interest in the place to merely not wanting to upset some sort of universal balance by forcing the two realms to intersect.

Ryan looked momentarily perplexed by Brendon’s question, which Brendon’s gut took as a signal to feel as if it were twisting itself into knots. However, he soon shrugged off the strangeness of it and answered as nonchalantly as unconcerned-sounding as ever, and Brendon regained his ability to breathe. “All right, I suppose,” Ryan mused, “as happy as they can be living in houses with only one room, at least.”

“My house has one room,” Brendon said, getting a little defensive at what Ryan was implying.

“Your house has well over a hundred rooms, Brendon,” Z corrected, finally joining the conversation, “your bedroom just happens to be separate from the rest of it.”

“Plus,” Ryan butted in before Brendon could point out the obvious fallacies in Z’s statement, “you’re friends with me, which has ought to make your life invariably more interesting than that of a common peasant.”

Spencer snorted at that, eliciting a glare from Ryan, and Z rolled her eyes. “Ah yes,” she said, “I’m sure without you in our lives we’d all simply perish in despair.”

“That was rather offensive,” Ryan said, with that same calm, pompous tone he used every time someone tried to argue with him, “it’s really no way to talk to a prince.”

“Well, you can punish me with all that authority you- oh wait- don’t have,” Z replied scathingly. Brendon bit his lip to hold in a laugh, and Spencer momentarily removed one of his hands from Ryan’s hair and let out an amused huff into his fist.

Ryan, however, was (as always) not phased by the comeback, or pretended so. “You act so high and mighty,” he said, “and yet you wish to marry a duck.”

Z looked about ready to gag him, and she fired back some sort of clever retort, but Brendon was no longer listening, for he had caught a glimpse of movement in the window behind his chair, and was now attempting to twist around to look at it while simultaneously trying not to draw attention to what he was doing. 

The Solar was on the top floor, and was on the same side as the main entrance to the castle, so he had a clear view of the path leading through the gates and off to the town, and at that moment those gates were opening to let a small wagon through. The view wasn’t perfect, in addition to being fairly far away, but Brendon could just make out a dark head of hair in the front contrasting the faded brown color of the wagon. Yet again, Sarah’s words drifted through his head, although this time it was, _“I’ve been making weekly deliveries here since I learned to control a horse.”_

Weekly. Meaning that next week, if he got up early enough, he could wait on the path to confront her and demand some much-needed answers.

Before Brendon had time to plan out exactly what he would ask her, however, Ryan’s haughty-as-ever voice drew him back to the present. “Coming to breakfast, Brendon?” he asked, sounding somewhat impatient, though not enough to sound as if he (god forbid) actually cared whether Brendon was coming or not.

Brendon tore his gaze away from the window to find that Spencer and Z had already left, and Ryan was lingering in the doorway, waiting for him. “Right. Yeah,” he said, getting up to follow Ryan to the Great Hall. By the way, what day is it?”

“Thursday,” Ryan replied, “why?”

“Just wondering,” Brendon replied lightly, and pushed past Ryan and into the hallway without another word.

Thursday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wild plot has appeared
> 
> This is late af and i'm not 100% satisfied with it but oh well. also apparently the link for my [tumblr](https://nerdinresidency.tumblr.com/) wasn't working so there's a new one. hopefully that works
> 
> oh yeah and btw if you didn't know a solar is a type of room in medieval castles and manors that, from what i can tell, was basically a private living room (hey look i actually did research for once (this still isn't historically accurate at all but idgaf))


	4. III: Their Cheeks Are Warm; Their Hands Are Cold

Wednesday night, Brendon’s only goal was to get to bed as early as possible, and he even went as far as simply snatching a bowl of stew from the kitchen and taking it back to his cottage instead of attending his usual dinner with the royal family (Ryan narrowed his eyes suspiciously at that, but appeared to accept Brendon’s mumbled excuse about stomach pains) in order to achieve it. The plan turned out to work almost too well, as Brendon found himself awake long before the moon looked to be even considering the idea of setting. 

At first, he considered heading up to the gardens and finding a nice place to sit and watch the stars, but he’d honestly never really understood the appeal of that. Stars were beautiful, of course, but stagnant, and he’d never been one to sit still for long periods of time without ending up lost inside his own mind. He recalled his father loving them, however- it had been a common occurrence in Brendon’s youth to wake up to find the cottage empty, and to peek outside worriedly only to see the familiar silhouette of his father outlined in the light his lantern as he headed up towards his beloved flowers.

It was with that image in mind that, instead of going up to the garden (which was mostly comprised of little green sprouts and skeletal trees that hadn’t yet regained all of the foliage they had lost in the last fall and subsequent winter anyway), Brendon found himself kneeling down beside the “kitchen” table (the house did, after all, consist of only one room, so there was really no distinction between a kitchen and dining room table) and pulling out the small bundle of cloth that was wedged between one leg of the table and the wall beside it.

After he had dislodged the object from its hiding place, he set it gently on the table and carefully unwrapped the cloth. It was beginning to smell a bit musty, and definitely looked worn around the edges, but Brendon didn’t much care, because, as with most things, it wasn’t the wrapping that mattered, but what was inside it.

In this case, that object was a thick, leather-bound journal with the name “Boyd Urie” carved into the front. It was full to the point of appearing to be just on the verge of bursting, with extra notes and papers crammed in between many of the already tightly-packed pages, and, were it not held shut by an attached strip of leather and wooden button, Brendon doubted the book would ever stay closed at all. Indeed, as soon as he freed the button from its hole, the book sprung open, the pages spilling open to reveal their contents.

The place it opened to happened to display a detailed sketch of a sprig of lavender, with notes below and around it listing ideal growing conditions, approximate heights, and the like. The handwriting was rather messy, as, being of common status, Boyd had only had the opportunity to learn to write after receiving a job at the castle, but it was still legible, and somehow the imperfection of it made the journal all the more meaningful in Brendon’s eyes. He spent a few minutes simply flipping through the pages, using careful hands so as not to damage the paper or smudge the ink, and simply taking them in. He imagined his father writing these words, perhaps sitting out on one of the benches in the garden on a bright summer’s day and sketching a nearby flower, or hunched over this very table under a flickering candlelight, labeling leaves and petals and stems and scribbling down tidbits of information learned from his years of experience.

But it was not these pages that Brendon was in search of at that moment, so, after a bit of perusing, he flipped to the very back of the book. There, nestled between the last page and back cover, was a small sheet of parchment with ragged edges, as if it have been torn from a larger one. Brendon brought his candle closer so he could read it, although he was careful not to bring it too close for fear of getting wax on any irreplaceable pages.

From what Brendon understood, his father had come to work at the castle when Brendon was no more than three years old. Their village had fallen victim to a plague, and the disease had eventually reached Brendon’s mother, Grace. Boyd, at the insistence of his dying wife, had been forced to flee so as to keep himself and his son safe. 

Knowing this story, Brendon surmised that the letter he currently held (or, more accurately, a finalized version of it) was what he had left behind in the bedroom of his dying wife when he left for that final time. And although he already knew the words by heart, he would sometimes take it out and reread it just for the sake of feeling the weight of the parchment in his hands.

 

_ Dearest Calla Lily, _

_ For many nights now, I have sat over this old table with nothing but a flickering candle as company and wished harder than ever before that I were a  _ ~~_sca_ _scha_~~ _ scholar or a poet, if only so that I may have even the  _ ~~_ posi _ ~~ _ possibility of learning the proper words to express my feelings for you. It is a  _ ~~_ suspitio _ ~~ _ suspicion of mine, however, that not even the wisest man in existence can grasp those words, and by that I mean that they do not exist at all, because how could someone reduce something so  _ ~~_huge_ _limitless_ _unconditional_~~ _ all-encompassing to a few simple scribbles on parchment? _

_ I suppose I  _ ~~_ shu _ ~~ _ should simply be glad that I learned to write at all, as most men of my status would never get such a chance. I suppose there are just so many other things to be thankful for in my life, a few are just bound to  _ ~~_ be missed _ ~~ _ slip through the cracks. _

_ However, as we both know, there are some truths in life that are not so pleasant, and, as much as I wish it could be different, the purpose of this letter is not  _ ~~_ soleley _ ~~ _ solely to flatter you. By the time you read this, I will already be long gone, for reasons I believe you already know. _

_ I cannot tell you where I will be, as I do not know myself, but wherever I end up, I  _ _ promise _ _ vow to plant the most vibrant garden in all the land, and every day I will gaze over it and see your cheeks in every blossoming rose, your elegance in every pansy, your  _ ~~_ personality _ ~~ _ demeanor in every hummingbird that flits between the rows of blooms. _

_ I ask you not to wait up for me, my darling, but remember that I will forever be  _ ~~_waiting_ _thinking_ _hoping_ _dreaming_~~

The letter ended there, rather abruptly, which Brendon assumed was due to his father choosing to begin again on a fresh sheet of parchment, likely due to the many mistakes (a commoner’s childhood, which typically included more oral stories than written ones, while beneficial to the syntax and vocabulary, did not include much in the way of spelling) and revisions visible in this draft.

Brendon traced his fingers over the words as if touching them would somehow bring more to the page. It didn’t of course, nor did it bring either of his parents back, but somehow it was comfortable. It was almost as if he could feel his father’s warm hand on his, and see the loving smile on his face, which was much more youthful than Brendon had ever seen it, as he thought of his wife in all of her pre-sickness glory.

Brendon’s daydreams were interrupted, however, when he glanced toward the window and realized that the sky was beginning to lighten, meaning Sarah would be arriving at any moment. Mentally cursing himself and praying that he hadn’t missed his chance, Brendon hurried to put the letter back in its place in the journal, the book in its cloth wrapping, and the bundle back underneath the table, though he still made sure to be careful as he did so.

He then ran his hands through his hair a few times, hoping he looked at least somewhat presentable (Z always said that first impressions were important, and Sarah already seemed to have had a bad one of him) and hurried out of his cottage and towards the road.

When he reached the path, he sat down in the middle of it. The positioning would probably read as obnoxious, but he wasn’t willing to take the chance that Sarah might simply ride straight past him. Once he was satisfied that he was in the exact middle of the road, he took to peering down it apprehensively, hoping Sarah would arrive soon.

Sure enough, he hadn’t been waiting for more than ten minutes when he heard the telltale sound of clattering hooves, and a cart appeared, curving around from the front side of the castle. Brendon stood up, and, as it drew nearer, he could just make out the figure of a dark-haired girl in a gray dress sitting atop it. He lifted an arm and began to wave, as he had just realized that, if she happened to not see him down on the road, he was pretty much guaranteed to be trampled.

Sarah finally noticed him when she was a few yards away. She yanked on the reins and, once the horse had slowed to a stop, stared down at  Brendon with her eyebrows raised for a few moments, before crossing her arms and replacing her somewhat incredulous expression with a guarded one. “You again.”

“Yeah. Me,” Brendon replied, as if to confirm his identity to her, although Sarah’s words had been phrased as more of a statement of fact than a question. He looked up at her, noticing for the first time how ragged the ends of her dress were, which reminded him why he had wanted to initiate this conversation in the first place. He cleared his throat. “What did you mean?” he blurted out, having forgotten that their prior conversation had likely not been in the front of her mind nearly as long as it had in his, meaning she probably wouldn’t have any idea what “it” was.

Not surprisingly, Sarah raised her eyebrows again at the question. “What did I mean,” she repeated. Her tone sounded critical, as if she were wondering exactly how intact Brendon’s sanity was.

“Last week, I mean,” Brendon said quickly. When Sarah still looked uncomprehending, he tried to elaborate. “When you brushed me off.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”

“Well, to start with,” Brendon said, his previously unsure voice growing in confidence as the numerous questions he had carefully planned out (over the course of the week, he’d practically prepared a script) finally flowing back into his mind. He stood up and walked over to stand beside the wagon as he spoke, thinking it might make the conversation seem less awkward, and perhaps hoping that it would compel her to climb down from the wagon so they could speak at eye level. “You talked about ‘us castle folk. Like you were… I dunno, bitter. Why?”

“You want to know why I’m bitter,” Sarah said in the same flat, disbelieving tone as before, as if he’d just asked her something inconceivably dense. She showed no signs of climbing down to get on his level (both literally and metaphorically).

“ _ Yes, _ ” Brendon replied, getting slightly impatient. He crossed his arms. “And it would be nice if you could stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Repeating my questions like they’re things I should already know. If I did, I wouldn’t be asking you.” Sarah stared at him, and her expression somehow conveyed the exact feeling Brendon was trying to describe. “Like that,” he said, gesturing at her face, “but with your voice.”

That seemed to be the last straw for Sarah, and she picked up the reins, which had been resting in her lap. “Yes, well, while this has been interesting,  _ some _ people have actual work to do, so-”

Brendon lunged forward instinctively and grabbed onto the side of the wagon. “Wait!” he exclaimed, desperation leaking into his voice, “you’re doing it again!”

Sarah turned back towards him, her eyes falling on his hand, which was still clinging to the wagon. It was at this moment Brendon realized just how ridiculous that reflex had been; if she had pulled the reins, the carriage would have lurched forwards regardless, and Brendon would’ve either been forced to let go and sent sprawling, or dragged along until he inevitably hit his head on something and got knocked out. He retracted his hand quickly, feeling his cheeks redden. “I mean,” he said, forcing his voice back down to a calmer tone, “you’re talking like you look down on me.”

“Oh, sorry, would you rather I genuflect?” Sarah asked with much more irritation than Brendon deemed necessary. Her voice sounded harsh and loud, like the vocal equivalent of the sound of someone ripping a bed sheet in half.

“No!” he said quickly, He shook his head earnestly, as if it would make his words more convincing.  “No, and I really don’t know how you came to that conclusion. I just… what did I do to you, exactly?”

“What did you…” Sarah trailed off when she realized that she was repeating the exact same behavior Brendon had called her out on only a few minutes before. She sighed and tightened her grip on the reins again. “Look, if you’re honestly that oblivious, there’s really not anything I can teach you.” 

With that, she urged the horse forward, and soon Brendon was left standing helplessly beside the road, feeling as if he knew even less than he did at the beginning of the conversation. “I don’t know what that means!” he called, half-hoping she would turn around and suddenly feel obliged to explain the reasons behind her seemingly unfounded hostility towards him. When she simply continued on down the path, he flopped down on the grass in defeat and resorted to staring frustratedly at the slowly-lightening sky.

Since it was so early, the ground was still wet with dew, which of course began to seep through the back of Brendon’s  tunic, making him all the more miserable. Just as he thought he couldn’t possibly look any more pathetic, a shadow fell over him, and he sat up to find none other than Spencer standing beside his outstretched legs, looking down at him questioningly. “Do I wanna know?”

“Probably not,” Brendon said with a sigh. A blade of grass fell out of his bangs, landing on his nose. He led out a vexed huff, sending it spiraling down to the ground to join its brethren. “Does Ryan want something?”

“Yeah,” Spencer replied with a nod, reaching down to help Brendon up as he did so, “breakfast. Apparently, if you don’t come, King George will feel obliged to discuss his plans for finding and invading the Rebel stronghold, and he’ll be in danger of being exposed to, y’know, actual responsibility.”

“Oh, well, we can’t have that, can we?” Brendon quipped almost automatically. Spencer let out an amused huff in agreement and turned towards the castle. As Brendon stood up to follow him, a thought occurred to him. “Hey, Spence,” he said, momentarily quickening his pace so as to walk beside Spencer instead of a few feet behind him, “you’re from town, right?”

“I was born there, yes,” Spencer said, “although, as you may remember, I came to work here at the age of eleven, so I doubt I’m the best source for answers to your questions.”

Brendon’s eyes widened. “Who said I had questions?” he asked in an instinctual attempt to dispel any idea that he had anything more than a casual interest in the town. Only after blurting the words out, and receiving a sideways glance from Spencer as a result, that he realized that the hurried question had done the exact opposite of deflecting suspicion. “Specific questions, I mean,” he added quickly, “They’re more of just... general wonderings.”

The few milliseconds it took Spencer to process that statement seemed to stretch on into eternity, and Brendon could feel his breath catch in his throat, although he still wasn’t sure why he felt obliged to be so secretive about it all. However, just when he felt like he couldn’t possibly take it any longer, Brendon was freed from Spencer’s scrutinizing gaze, and Spencer turned his head back towards the castle. “Of course,” he said, “but the principle still stands: if you have concerns about the town, perhaps you should visit there yourself. You aren’t forbidden to leave, are you?”

Brendon blinked, feeling slightly foolish for not thinking of that earlier. After all, it was such a simple solution- after all, what better place was there to get information about something than from the source itself? And yet somehow it felt as if the idea wasn’t as straightforward as it sounded; like there was some sort of hidden difficulty behind the act of leaving.

But perhaps, he reasoned, that was simply because he’d never done it before. As Spencer had pointed out, it wasn’t like he was  _ forbidden  _ from leaving- or, if such a rule were in place, he’d certainly never heard anything of it. At that thought, Bredon hardened his resolve and picked up his pace so that he was more marching than walking in the direction of the castle, determined to get the King’s approval for his plans.

**< <>>**

Despite their royal status, meals with the Rosses had never been much of formal affair (not for Brendon, at least- he supposed it may be different if he were a royal himself, or some other figure that would command the respect of the King and his children). However, even after all these years, Brendon still found King George II to be a rather intimidating individual, and always made sure to stay on his best behavior when in his presence, which compelled him to dip his head respectfully upon entering the great hall, despite knowing Ryan would probably tease him for it later.

As always, his majesty sat at the head of the table, as any king would, with his children on either side. He looked a fair amount like Ryan, with the same dark eyes (a trait also shared by Z), pale skin, and prominent Adam’s apple. They had the same hair color as well; while Z inherited her late mother’s naturally blonde hair, which she also occasionally lightened with some sort of honey and water mixture one of her ladies-in-waiting had taught her how to make, Ryan had been born with the same dark brown locks as his father. Ryan’s, however, was more textured- another gift from the lovely Queen Danielle- so while George’s hair was straight and typically pulled back into a smooth, orderly ponytail, Ryan’s fell loosely around his shoulders (as was customary for one of royal blood) in thick, somewhat unruly curls, which, in Brendon’s opinion, gave him a much more youthful, softer look (although that was probably the only time Brendon would ever use “Ryan” and “soft” in the same train of thought).

Brendon waited in the doorway for King George’s gaze to land on him. As always, he felt oddly exposed with those keen, dark eyes boring into him, and fought off the urge to squirm. Just as he felt like he couldn’t possibly bear it for any longer, though, King George nodded, his movements slight but still sharp and commanding. Brendon exhaled gratefully and made his way over to the table now that he had been officially welcomed.

As Brendon approached, Z opened her mouth, presumably to greet him, only to have Ryan speak before she could get a word in. “You’re late,” he said flatly, as if Brendon’s tardiness were a personal offense. 

“Apologies, my glorious not-crown-prince,” Brendon replied. He knelt down threw his hands towards the ceiling as if to genuflect, with clear, mocking exaggeration. “Please, allow me to kiss thy feet in a display of my loyalty.”

Ryan narrowed his eyes, looking distinctly unamused at Brendon’s theatrics, but, from what little he could see between the thick locks of Ryan’s hair, Brendon could’ve sworn his ears were just a shade pinker than usual. “Sit down.”

“As you wish, your greatness,” Brendon said smoothly. He plopped down in the chair beside Ryan with a smug grin on his face.

Ryan continued to glare at him for a few moments, before blinking and quickly composing his expression into one of careful neutrality. “Well,” he said airily, “If you’re so adamant about status, I suppose you won’t want to be eating the same food as the royal family. After all, you  _ are  _ a servant.” He pushed the loaf of white bread, which Brendon had been just about to take a generous slice of, towards George and Z. “Spencer, why don’t you go have the kitchen staff make Brendon here some gruel. After all, we wouldn’t want to make a guest feel uncomfortable.” He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of Spencer, who was just about to exit the room.

“Hey!” Brendon exclaimed. He lunged after the bread, only to be blocked by Ryan, who held out his arm to serve as a barrier. Despite being wiry, the outstretched arm was surprisingly immovable, and Brendon had to get up on his knees in order to get over it. “You-”

However, before Brendon could launch what would have likely become a long string of unsavory insults, the fight was interrupted by none other than King George II, who cleared his throat. Brendon immediately returned to his seat, similarly to how a worm retracts back into the ground when it spots the shadow of a circling bird. Even Ryan returned his hand to his side and straightened his back in response to his father’s disapproval.

Z watched them and suppressed a giggle with her hand before turning back towards George. “As I was saying, father,” she said, resuming whatever conversation they had been having before Brendon’s arrival, “I just think they should be invited. Shouldn’t they at least have a chance to  _ see _ my future husband before he becomes King?”

George let out one of those heavy, tired sighs that only authority figures seemed to have the capability to effectively make. “Most of them probably won’t even _want_ to come. They’ve got work to do down there, tending to their livestock and such. And the ones who do have time will be embarrassed, as they cannot afford the proper attire.”  
“But if a substantial amount of them go, they won’t need to be embarrassed, for they’ll all be wearing the wrong clothes.” Z sat back in her chair and ran a hand through her long hair as she did so. “I don’t see the harm in simply sending out a message.”

“This is a _ suitor ball _ , Elizabeth. You’re certainly not going to marry a townsperson, so, therefore, they have no reason to be there.” George’s voice rose as he spoke, clearly trying to exert his monarchal authority over the situation.

Z, however, stood her metaphorical ground. “I clearly won’t be marrying Princess Keltie of Ludium,” she argued, her voice rising in both volume and tone as well, “but she’s still invited, isn’t she?”

“Princess Keltie will be there on diplomatic business with her mother,” George replied. His voice had returned to it’s normal pitch, and somehow sounded even more firm and assertive because of it. “Besides,”- he gestured towards Ryan, who was boredly attempting to carve his name into a slab of butter with one of the prongs of his fork- “your brother needs someone to dance with.”

“He really doesn’t,” Ryan grumbled in reply, but, for once, no one was listening. 

Z sighed and recomposed herself. “Father, I simply think it important to have at least some sort of contact with the townspeople,” she said, “After all, I will be their ruler someday, and I think it important to know how they view their country before I take control of it.”

“And as King, it is currently  _ my _ duty to attend to those concerns, and I can assure you that the people are perfectly happy in their lives.” King George replied matter-of-factly, leaving no room for argument.

Knowing she had lost, Z momentarily sat back in defeat, before deciding on another tactic and springing back forward. “Well, if I can’t invite them to the palace, perhaps I should go to them instead. Surely we can spare a guard or to drive me into town.”

George brought his hand down hard on the table, creating a heavy slapping sound that was accented by the clang of Ryan’s fork against his plate when he dropped it in alarm. “Elizabeth, you know it isn’t safe for any of us out there, what with the rebel threat getting ever nearer!”

“I just want to know!” Z exclaimed, although they all knew King George wouldn’t budge in his decision. She crossed her arms and sunk down in her seat, and for a second she appeared dangerously close to a Ryan-esque pout.

Partly due to an instinctive desire not to see Z, who was typically the more reasonable, bearable one of the royal children, sink as low as using her brother’s incredibly annoying, childish methods of getting his way, and also because he’d been planning on bringing up the topic anyway, Brendon chose this time to mention his idea of going into town. “I... I could go for you,” he said, although he more murmured it to the table than to anyone in particular, since, as previously stated, King George II was, in fact, incredibly intimidating, even when he hadn’t just resolutely shut down an argument with his daughter.

Z, however, managed to catch the words. She began to shake her head, “Brendon, you don’t have to-”

“No, no,” Brendon interrupted, sitting up straighter, “I was actually thinking of going anyway. I remembered this festival my dad took me to once when I was little, and-”

He fell silent, though, when King George stood up suddenly, the force of his body pushing the table a few inches forward. “ _ No one _ at this table is going to town right now, and that’s final!” he said at a volume that was only a step or two before shouting. The room was silent for a few tense moments, even Ryan hanging on to his father’s every word.

Apparently done with his outburst, King George sat back town, and they all listened to the legs of his chair scrape against the floor as he scooted it back into place. “Besides, Brendon,” he said calmly, although Brendon still swallowed hard when George said his name, “don’t you have preparations to do for Elizabeth’s ball? It’s less than two months away, and, from what I’ve gathered, bouquets don’t grow overnight.”

Brendon bobbed his head up and down hurriedly. “Right. Of course, I’ll, uh, I should do that. You’re right,” he replied. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ryan’s eyes glimmering in a (sadistically, in Brendon’s opinion) entertained way at his uneasiness, but he decided to let it go.

King George gave a quick, sharp nod in acceptance of Brendon’s correction, which at least somewhat quelled the nervous shivers that were slithering up and down Brendon’s spine. The agitation only completely faded, though, when King George finally focused his attention elsewhere, namely on his son, who had given up on writing his name and was now carving abstract shapes into the butter. “Ryan,” he said in a scolding tone.

Both Brendon and Z smiled down at their own plates in amusement as Ryan rolled his eyes and muttered something about control freaks and the heredity of divine right, and all thought of the world outside the castle walls was, for the moment, forgotten.

**< <>>**

It wasn’t until after the meal that the subject came up again, though this time the conversation was had only by Brendon and Ryan. After King George had finished eating, he had dismissed them all to go about their own business, at which time Brendon had made sure to mention that he would be spending the day designing the flower arrangements for Z’s upcoming ball, and Ryan had quickly volunteered to help (read: lounge against a tree and occasionally poke fun at) him, probably in an attempt to get out of whatever responsibilities his father may or may not have otherwise bestowed upon him. 

Regardless of Ryan’s motives, King George had waved his approval before heading off to some other part of the castle for whatever kingly business he had to attend to. Z had disappeared with one of her ladies in waiting (some dark haired girl who Brendon was pretty sure had a name starting with an A, but he wasn’t absolutely sure- Z’s ladies in waiting had never taken much of an interest in him), leaving Brendon and Ryan alone in the hallway leading out towards the back of the castle, save for the two guards standing at attention directly outside the Great Hall doors.

Only after they had turned a corner and were no longer within sight of the guards did Brendon feel comfortable speaking freely. Forcing his voice and demeanor to stay casual (a stark contrast to the anxious jitters in his stomach and the true weight behind the question forming on the tip of his tongue), he said, “Don’t you think it’s a little… odd how adamant your father was about me not going to town?” He bit down hard on his tongue as soon as he said it, afraid that he had gone too far. After all, though he was used to Ryan accusing him of treason practically every day, he had the feeling that, with this question, he was now dangerously close to actually committing it.

Ryan, though, didn’t seem particularly phased by it, and simply shrugged. “If it’s not safe for me and Z, it’s not safe for you.”

“But I’m not royal!” Brendon exclaimed. As was typical when it came to arguing with Ryan, he had completely forgotten his earlier reservations about bringing up the subject in the span of a few seconds.

“Neither was your father,” Ryan replied in a tone that was so even and reasonable that Brendon wanted to slap him, and probably would have if he were more certain King George wouldn’t behead him for it.

Because of this, as always Brendon fired back with his own logical argument instead of resorting to physicality, and, if he did say so himself, it sounded just as reasonable and annoyingly superior as Ryan’s had. “My father was targeted because he was close to your father, who  _ is _ royal.”

When Ryan responded, though, he sounded suddenly angry, almost as if this argument were more than the average, garden variety banter he and Brendon had exchanged almost every day for as long as either of them could remember. “And don’t think they would do the same to you in order to get to me?” 

Not sure whether to be more taken aback by the words or the tone in which they were spoken, Brendon halted in his tracks. “Would it?” he asked. The words had more tumbled out of his mouth and anything else, but, in what little forethought he did manage to have about them, he’d meant them to sound at least a little bit lighthearted. However, once they were hovering in the air between him and Ryan, he realized that that teasing aura had gotten stuck in his throat, leaving the words stripped down to reveal the genuine inquiry underneath.

When he realized Brendon was no longer accompanying him, Ryan spun around so that they were finally facing each other and crossed his arms over his chest. He looking unmistakably irritated, almost frighteningly so, though Brendon still hadn’t a clue as to why.  “Would it  _ what _ ?” he practically spat, and, for what he was pretty sure was the first time in either of their lives, Brendon felt genuinely intimidated by him.

Brendon momentarily considered simply dropping the subject. The atmosphere of the room seemed to have suddenly acquired a tension akin to that of, say, a kitchen in which someone is crossing the room while holding a full-to-the-brim pot of scalding water, so full that the slightest bounce will send the liquid sloshing over their bare feet. 

However, he held his ground, and crossed his arms as he spoke. “Get to you,” he replied, and yet again, the words came out sounding a few steps away from vulnerability, despite him originally planning on making them sound strong enough to match the energy behind Ryan’s seemingly unfounded anger.

Ryan stared straight into his eyes, and an almost uncomprehending and somewhat incredulous look flashed across his face, as if Brendon had just asked him how to breathe, or something equally as brainless. Then, he spun back around and continued striding off down the hallway as if he’d never stopped in the first place. “Well, who else would feed my ego by continuously losing arguments against me?” he said, and all traces of the fierceness that had completely consumed him only seconds before was gone, save for the little bit of oddly companionable scorn that was always present in his demeanor. 

It felt as if the entire hallway sighed in relief at the sudden jolt back to normalcy, and Brendon exhaled with it. He jogged a few paces to catch up with Ryan as he responded with a requisite defensive retort. “There’s a difference between winning and simply refusing to participate when you know you’re about to lose.”

The banter continued down the hallway and on into the garden as, per usual, Brendon hurled argument after argument at Ryan, getting increasingly frustrated as he did so, only to have Ryan bounce them right back in that annoyingly unruffled, rational tone of his, and everything was back to being exactly how it was meant to be.

_ You aren’t forbidden to leave, are you? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun history fact: long hair = status back then??? So yeah there’s a new mental image for ya lmao  
> (confession: I’m secretly thankful for that fact bc i can use it to justify lengthy (no pun intended) descriptions of Ryan’s hair bc tbh the world needs more of those)  
> oh my god i had so much writer's block these past few weeks + a ton of school work to do (I actually have a project to do rn but I was on a roll and didn't want to stop writing oops)  
> On another note, guess who seems to be reverting back to their awful habit of using way too many parentheses??  
> Anyway I'm starting to ramble so i'll just end this here. Hopefully the next chapter will come out faster than this one, but tbh no promises bc I have like 3 weeks of school left (including finals) so ofc i have like 10x more studying/projects to do than usual


	5. IV: The Torch That Flickers on the Wall;

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's been more than a month since my last update. Oops :/ This chapter turned out to be ridiculously long, and it was taking forever to write bc the school year ended during that month (i'm a sophmore now ayyy) so I was pretty busy, and then afterwards I was kinda tired of doing anything that required brainpower at all for like a week.   
> Also, if you read this before and are confused, yes, I did originally have this chapter split into two parts. You're not crazy, I just decided to change it.

Brendon really did mean to just forget the idea.

After all, he found that, when all three members of the royal family told him not to do something, it was best not to do it. Actually, he’d never really discovered this fact, as he couldn’t recall ever having done, or even wanted to do, anything that even one member of the royal family had told him not to do (excluding Ryan. If Brendon took every time Ryan told him to shut up seriously, he’d probably be mute). Still, it seemed like a good rule to live by.

He actually managed to, for the most part, push all thoughts of town to the back of his mind for the entire week. Sure, there were a few times they had drifted into his consciousness- once, when seated before a heaping portion of veal and assorted vegetables, he found himself picturing the carrots in front of him bumping around in the back of Sarah’s wagon as she drove it over one of the surrounding hills, and again when Z had to leave a riveting conversation about different kinds of mice (Ryan thought they all looked the same; Brendon thought he was an idiot and wanted to know if he’d ever actually encountered a mouse before in his life) in order to be fitted for a new gown, which Brendon couldn’t help but mentally compare to the single thin, grayish frock Sarah had worn during both of their encounters- but he always hurriedly found ways to distract himself and direct his thoughts back to the castle, where they apparently belonged.

Which was why Brendon took it as a sign from the heavens themselves when, on the morning of the very next Thursday, he found himself lying awake in his cottage long before any sunlight reached the windows.

He tried to go back to sleep. He really did. But somehow his buzzing brain just wouldn’t shut up, and eventually, he decided to go on a walk in the hopes of clearing it.

That’s really all it was. A walk. Just a leisurely stroll around the castle grounds. A chance to enjoy the crisp dawn air, still just cold enough to turn each of Brendon’s exhalations into a little white puff that danced away into nothingness only seconds after it’s creation. That’s what it began as, and that’s what it continued to be.

Until, that is, the telltale pounding of a horse’s hooves on the dusty path around the castle- along with the rattle of a rickety wagon moving across the slightly uneven surface- reached Brendon’s far-too-eager ears, and all his efforts to forget about the whole ordeal seemed to drift away faster as the clouds of his breath.

If, in the past week, he’d resurrected some sort of protective wall in his mind, then that sound was the trebuchet that broke through it. As in any battle, soldiers poured in through the hole, except they weren’t soldiers at all, but questions. Questions about the town and why Sarah seemed so dissatisfied with the conditions there, why she showed such blatant resentment towards so-called “castle folk”, and, perhaps most worryingly, why King George seemed so adamant not to have these questions answered.

There was, of course, still a shred of rationality in his brain (or, at least what he presumed to be rationality. He was well aware, however, that it could’ve just as well been naivety, and this awareness was the entire reason he was fighting this internal war at all), which told him he was being ridiculous, and that he ought to just forget about it. After all, the king’s reasoning was most likely just as Ryan had said- he didn’t want to endanger Brendon by letting him into a place where he would be an easy target for the Rebels, who were very likely to attack anyone with even a semblance of a relationship with the royal family.

Brendon knew this. Of course he did. He’d be stupid not to. But he just couldn’t shake his curiosity and found that he had a hard time focusing on anything else without doing so, so it was really his duty to both himself and everyone around him that he visit the town in order to put these absurd doubts to rest.

At least, that’s what he told himself as he listened to the grass crunch under his feet with each jogging step that brought him closer to the road.

He decided to wait in the center of it again, having no doubt in his mind that Sarah would drive right past him otherwise. By the time Brendon got into position, the wagon was already in view and moving towards him at a somewhat frightening pace.

It was so fast, in fact, that Sarah barely had time to stop before crashing head-on into Brendon. As soon as she spotted him, she yanked on the reins hurriedly, so hard that the horse let out a startled neigh and reared up, which would’ve been a serious problem if she had been riding on its back instead of safely seated on her bench in the front of the wagon. Although she was not hurt, however, she still appeared thoroughly vexed by the occurrence and made her feelings very clear to Brendon in the form of a harsh glare as she climbed down to quell the horse’s alarm.

Neither of them spoke until Sarah had succeeded in calming the animal and was sitting back up on the wagon. She picked up the reins, clearly ready to start moving again, but Brendon didn’t budge from his spot on the road, which prompted her to continue glaring down at him in annoyance. “I’m going to run you over.”

She watched Brendon with that seemingly ever-present wariness as he stood up, crossed over to stand beside the wagon and, in one fluid movement, grabbed hold of the sides and climbed up to the bench area on which Sarah was seated. “Not if I’m up here,” he countered.

Sarah stared at him for a few moments, and Brendon felt the rhythm of his heartbeat quicken. Although he’d done a fairly good job of acting assertive, he still had no actual power over Sarah, and he wouldn’t put it past her to simply push him off the wagon and quite literally leave him in the dust.

However, just when the apprehension in the air was approaching levels Brendon previously wasn’t even sure were possible, Sarah snapped her head back forwards and uttered a command to the horse, signaling it to finish the journey to the kitchen door. Although the pace was leisurely, Brendon wasn’t prepared for the sudden movement and ended up tumbling off the back of the bench and landing in the bed of the wagon, surrounded by numerous sacks of what he assumed to be various fruits and vegetables.

Once he’d regained the breath that had been knocked out of him by a particularly painful bag of what felt like some sort of root vegetable, Brendon pushed himself into a sitting position, still triumphant in the fact that he had managed to convince Sarah to take him into town, and having completely forgotten his earlier reservations. “So you’re taking me?” he asked with almost childlike excitement, not letting the pain in his back (seriously, how could something that came from a plant feel _that_ hard) disrupt his victorious spirit.

Sarah twisted around in her seat to look down at him in what could only describe as disdain, though Brendon just barely caught a glimpse of amusement in her eyes, and could’ve sworn he saw the corners of her lips twitch slightly, as if she were holding back a smile at his eagerness. She shrugged in response to the question. “If you really wanna see what your people did to mine, it’s not my business to stop you.”

“You’re talking as if we’re from two completely different worlds,” Brendon said, confused yet again by her undisguised dislike for seemingly all who resided within the castle walls.

Sarah tilted her head, and it seemed as if she were searching for something in Bredon’s eyes. He found himself feeling the way he always did during these encounters, as if there was some sort of obvious truth he was missing.

After a few moments, Sarah, having apparently not found whatever she was looking for, returned to her typical, forward-facing riding position as Brendon clambered forward and pulled himself back up onto the bench. However, just as they slowed to a halt outside the kitchen door, she spoke again, although this time her gaze remained fixed on a point somewhere off in the distance as she said, in a voice barely loud enough to surpass a murmur, “We are.”

**< <>>**

The journey went fairly smoothly at first. Once they made it to the kitchen, Brendon helped Sarah and some kitchen servant boy unload the produce from the back of the wagon (which turned out the be quite an amusing ordeal for both Sarah and the servant boy, as Brendon soon discovered that sacks of grain were much heavier than they looked).

When they reached the castle gates, however, a difficulty arose. Just as they reached the part of the road that curved around towards the front of the grounds, a thought occurred to Brendon. “The guards don’t check this wagon, do they?” he asked, trying to keep his voice as casual as possible so as not to arouse suspicion.

Sarah snorted, and Brendon noticed her hands clenching tighter around the reins. “Of course they do. You think they trust us not to steal?” She glared off into the distance for a moment, bitterness twisting her expression into one of angry cynicism, before cocking her head slightly and tilting in to face Brendon. “Why?”

Brendon felt his palms begin to sweat at Sarah’s reply. The gates had just come into view, and his insides felt as if they were twisting themselves into one of the elaborate braided hairstyles Z always wore on special occasions at the sight of the pair of guards standing in perfect, stock-still posture on the other side of it. “Well, strictly speaking, I don’t exactly…” Brendon trailed off partly because he was almost certain Sarah would push him off the wagon if he revealed that she was inadvertently helping disobey a direct order of the royal family, and also because, with every passing second, the wagon drew closer and closer to the dreaded guards. “Look, I can explain later. I’ve just gotta…” Yet again, Brendon didn’t finish his sentence, but this time it was because he was too busy diving under the pile of now-empty food sacks in the back of the wagon, leaving Sarah, in a rather dumbfounded state, alone on the bench.

Before she had time to do anything about it, though, the gates were upon them, and Brendon heard one of the guards call out and authoritative “Halt!”, followed by the wagon coming to a sudden stop. In his current position, which was facing the ground  with his legs tucked under the rest of his body and his chin pressed up against his knees, his forehead was pressed up against the floor of the wagon, and, with the sudden stop, he felt it scrape against the rough wood as the wagon lurched forward a bit. It was not a comfortable feeling at all, but all Brendon could do was squeeze his eyes shut and hope he didn’t get any splinters.

“All people and items leaving the castle must be searched. You know the rules,” said a loud, authoritative voice, which Brendon assumed belonged to one of the guards. He felt his heartbeat quicken and his body tense up. Even if the check wasn’t all that thorough and the guards only looked through a couple of the sacks, moving even one would very likely expose at least some part of his body.

Next came Sarah’s voice, and she sounded almost nervous, and much more polite than she’d ever been talking to Brendon. “Oh, of course, I just… well, my father wants me home quickly today, and-”

The guard cut her off, and his voice sounded threatening and almost sinister when he spoke. “You know, resisting a mandatory search makes you seem very suspicious…” The tiny bit of hope Brendon had gained when he’d heard Sarah’s attempted excuse was completely squandered with that statement, and his tensed up muscles went lax not because he was comfortable, but because he felt that his discovery was inevitable, and no amount of apprehension would save him from it.

Sarah seemed to feel the same way, or perhaps she was just too intimidated by the guards to protest. “Oh, no, I’m not resisting!” she said quickly, her voice at least an octave higher than usual, “You have every right to search my wagon, of course.”

“Get the back,” the guard said, presumably to his partner, and Brendon tensed up again despite his decided surrender to the inevitable as he heard heavy footfalls right beside the wagon. The burlap sacks had begun to make his bare arms itch, and it was getting harder and harder not to scratch them by the second.

The weight of the sacks resting on his back lessened slightly, meaning the guard had picked a few of them up. A few seconds later, there was a soft pat near his head as the guard tossed one aside, and another just beside his shoulder. Then suddenly, he felt a rush of air against his side and gulped, knowing he had been discovered.

“What the…” the guard said. His voice was higher pitched than his partner’s, enough to be very distinctive, but he still managed to sound very strong and intimidating.

“What?” the other first guard asked, and Brendon could hear his boots thumping against the dirt path as he jogged over to the back of the wagon. When he saw what the other guard had reacted to, which Brendon presumed was a little bit of his tunic and the strip of skin below it (due to the amount of air hitting it, Brendon realized that the garment had ridden up slightly due to his positioning), he began to push the rest of the sacks aside, revealing more and more of Brendon’s huddled form.

Once Brendon’s body was entirely exposed, he heard both guards slide knives out of their sheaths. “Turn over and reveal your identity” the deeper-voiced guard ordered, “or you will be assumed hostile.”

Brendon turned over slowly, weighing his possible courses of action. On one hand, he could try to convince them that he was some sort of helper to Sarah, though he had no idea how he’d explain his hiding under the sacks, or how he wasn’t in the cart when it arrived, and, with the Rebel threat steadily growing as it was, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that they would assume him to be some sort of spy. On the other hand, he could admit to who he was and likely be brought before the king, who would certainly be very cross with him (and that was assuming they believed him at all).

As it turned out, he didn’t need to make such a decision at all, because, as soon as Brendon’s face was visible, the higher voiced guard spoke, this time in a much less aggressive tone, “Brendon?”

Brendon opened his eyes, which he’d almost forgotten were closed, blinking in the sudden light. Once the spots in his vision had cleared, he propped himself up on his elbows to look at the guards. They were both surprisingly short (perhaps even shorter than Brendon, who, according to Ryan, had such a ridiculously small stature that he’d probably be mistaken for an improperly dressed girl if he went long enough without a haircut), but had broad, muscular builds that more than made up for whatever intimidation was lost in their lacking heights. The slightly shorter of the pair, who had a few thick, frizzy curls that were just visible as they stuck out from underneath his helmet, had stepped back from the wagon, while the other was still leaning over Brendon to peer down at him so closely that Brendon could’ve sworn he felt the man’s copper-colored beard tickle his jaw. HIs fingers were wrapped around the hilt of a well-polished knife, which he had pointed directly at Brendon’s head, prepared to strike at any moment.

For a few seconds, nobody moved. Brendon tried (and mostly failed) to keep his eye on both the guard and the knife at the same time, as well as make sure his heart didn’t thump it’s way right through his ribcage and out of his body altogether, which it seemed to want to do. It seemed as if the redheaded guard would never stop scanning Brendon’s face suspiciously, and he indeed might have if the other guard hadn’t clapped a firm hand over his shoulder and pull him away.

After sharing a few meaningful glances with his partner, the curly-haired guard turned to Brendon and offered a hand to help him up. “So sorry if we scared you,” he said, “we’ve got to stay vigilant, with all this worry about the Rebels and such.”

“Of course, I… I understand,” Brendon managed to stutter, still recovering from the genuine fear he’d felt during the search, not to mention the startlement at the fact that the guards recognized him. Recalling these feelings, he stared at the guard’s outstretched hand warily not sure whether or not he should take it. “How, uh… how do you know my name?”

“Ah, of course. Cautiousness is a good trait to have in these times.” The guard brought his hand back to his side, realizing Brendon wasn’t going to take it, but his expression remained warm and amiable. “I’m Joe, by the way. Andy and I have been supervising you and the prince since you were ten years old.” When he said the name “Andy”, he glanced back at the other guard, who didn’t seem to talk much, but occasionally nodded along with Joe’s words. “Which leads to the question of what exactly you’re doing out here. Can’t say I’ve ever seen you outside the castle walls.”

Brendon dug his fingernails into his own palm nervously. “Oh, I, uh…” he mumbled, wracking his brain for a logical excuse, “there’s this, um, flower! Yeah, this super rare flower that I’ve heard word of being grown in town.” As his confidence in the story grew, Brendon’s voice grew stronger and more believable-sounding, and his heart rate was finally dropping back down to normal. “Sarah here,” he continued, gesturing to Sarah, who, once she had finished speaking to the guards, had contented herself with watching the scene play out from safely atop her bench, “has agreed to take me to check it out. I’m hoping I can get ahold of one and add it to the gardens as a surprise for Z’s ball.” Ideally, the guards would catch on to the word “surprise” and perhaps feel obliged not to tell the royal family of Brendon’s outing.

The guard nodded, accepting the lie easily, and Brendon could only hope Andy, who was standing in just the right place for Brendon’s view of his face to be blocked by the other guard’s shoulder, did as well. “A noble cause. But are you sure you don’t want a guard to come with?  I’m sure we can spare someone from one of the lesser-used corridors.”

“No!” Brendon blurted out. Judging from how much persuasion it had taken to convince Sarah to bring him along, he doubted she, or any of her peers, wanted _another_ castle dweller coming to visit. Realizing how suspicious his exclamation probably sounded, Brendon cleared his throat and corrected himself in a much more normal tone. “No thank you, I mean. I don’t think that will be necessary. Besides, we should really get going.” He twisted around to meet Sarah’s eyes, and she picked up the reins.

Joe nodded and stepped out of the wagon’s path. However, Andy remained standing in the middle of the road, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why was he in the back?” he asked, and Brendon noticed that his hand was still resting on the hilt of his knife.

Brendon felt his stomach tie itself into knots again. It wasn’t clear who, exactly, the question was directed towards, but in any case, it was one he hoped would be avoided. “Oh, I, uh…” this time, no convenient lie sprung to mind, and he was left floundering.

Luckily, Sarah came to the rescue. “He was getting all nauseous on the wagon,” she said. As with Brendon, the lie came out shaky and unsure at first, but her voice strengthened as she added to it, getting bold enough to even throw in a low-level insult, which somehow greatly the believability of the statement. “Apparently it was too bumpy for him, the weak-stomached loiter-sack.”

The guards, however, did not seem amused by the light barb. “You might want to watch how you address your superiors,” Joe warned sharply, in a tone much less welcoming than the one he used with Brendon. When he turned back to Brendon, though, his expression and tone returned to ones of affable brightness **.** “Is that true?” he asked, and Brendon found it funny how the guards believed his excuses without question, but not Sarah’s. Must’ve been just because they were more familiar with him than her. The explanation almost made sense if he conveniently disregarded the fact that Sarah had been passing through these gates twice a week since what was probably long before these guards reached eligible ages to hold their positions.

“Yeah, I… lying down helps. And shutting my eyes,” Brendon said. Both guards nodded, and Andy finally joined Joe on the side of the road in order to let Brendon and Sarah pass.

Once they were far enough away from the palace gates not to be seen or heard by the guards, Brendon climbed up onto the bench beside Sarah. “Thanks,” he said. When she didn’t acknowledge him and continued to stare straight ahead as she guided the horse down a trail both she and it could probably follow whilst blindfolded and extremely drunk, he felt the urge to continue speaking, if only to fill the rather awkward silence. “For lying for me, I mean.”

Sarah shrugged, still keeping her eyes on the road. “Didn’t really have a choice.”

For the first time, Brendon realized that his clandestine actions, if found out, would likely affect Sarah just as much as him. When he remembered his conversation with Ryan outside the Great Hall, in which Ryan had implied that Brendon being harmed would “get to him”, and compared it to the almost threatening way Joe had told Sarah off simply for a **little tease** , he amended that statement:

Sarah would be affected much more than him.

As soon as this sunk in, Brendon opened his mouth to say something about it, though he wasn’t entirely sure what. An apology, perhaps? How exactly did one apologize for putting someone’s… well, Brendon quite honestly didn’t want to imagine what of Sarah’s he could be putting at stake.

Before he could work out exactly what to say, though, Sarah turned to him and spoke, and it was clear in her tone that any anger she was expressing was actually just being used in an attempt to hide the immense wave of fear threatening to drown her. “Just so I know- exactly how treasonous of an act am I committing here?”

“I…” Brendon sighed and hung his head, finding himself unable to meet Sarah’s eyes. “King George told me specifically not to go. And Ryan and Z- uh, the prince and princess- discouraged it as well,” he admitted, still staring at the wooden floor of the wagon. He felt like a little kid who’d been caught lying to his mother and was now awaiting his punishment. If Sarah slapped him right then, he wouldn’t blame her.

The entire world seemed absolutely silent for what could’ve been anywhere between half a second to a century (Brendon felt as if it were closer to the higher end of that scale, though rationality told him otherwise). Brendon let his gaze creep up just enough to see Sarah’s hands, which were clutching onto the reins so hard they were beginning to tremble. Brendon still couldn’t force himself to look at her face, but he expected Sarah to explode at any moment.

Then, against all prognoses, she let out a harsh, barking exhale, halfway between a scoff and a laugh. “Well, of course King George doesn’t want anyone from his walled paradise to see the _real_ world.”

“He just wants to keep me safe,” Brendon said automatically. King George may not have been the friendliest, but Brendon did believe he genuinely wanted to keep his children and, by extension, Brendon safe.

“From what? Poor people?”

“From the rebels, of course!”

Sarah stared at him for a moment, an unreadable expression flashing through her eyes. Then, she turned her head forward and continued to stare down the long, winding road ahead, just as she had been at the beginning of the conversation. “Ah yes,” she said flatly, and Brendon yet again felt strangely as if there was some sort of joke being delivered that he didn’t understand, “the rebels.”

**< <>>**

They traveled the rest of the way in silence, save for the occasional snort from the horse and rattling from the old wagon when they went over particularly bumpy stretches of road. Brendon took to gazing out over the seemingly endless expanse of rolling hills stretching off in three directions (the fourth being the area to Brendon’s right, in which the wide expanse of yellowish grass met the dark green mystery of a forest, which was also nice to look at, but wasn’t nearly as bright and freeing to behold).

What really captured Brendon’s attention, though, was not the land, but the sky above it. At the castle, the wall enclosing the grounds was much too high for anyone to be able to see the horizon, save for in the highest parts of the towers. Occasionally, Z or Ryan would take Brendon up to the top of the one in the private wing to watch the sun rise and set, and he’d even gone alone a few times (though not to that particular tower, as King George didn’t seem to particularly like him going there unescorted).

But it was only really those times- at sunrise and sunset- that he ever bothered to look at the horizon; after all, who thinks to view such things without vibrant strokes of color to draw their eyes to it? He was sure he’d seen a simple daytime horizon at  _some_ point in his life- after all, he  _had_ been to town before, and he’d probably been up on the tower with Ryan or Z during the day at some point as well, but he’d always just let his eyes drift over it, favoring much more conspicuous parts of the environment, like how much stronger and fresher the breeze felt without the walls to block it, or the way the sunlight made the tips of Ryan’s eyelashes appear to have been made of the same golden material as the lacework on his tunic.

Even without the added attraction of the sun piercing it (sunrise had begun when they were busy unloading the wagon, and by now it was mostly over, with only a slight golden tint in a few of the more far-off clouds to prove it had ever happened at all), the horizon was beautiful, though in a completely different way. During a sunset, it was beautiful in the same way a hydrangea is- huge, vibrant, and unmistakably eye-catching, stealing attention like a bandit in a royal carriage. This daytime horizon, on the other hand, was more akin to a daisy- simple, nearly always present, and often overlooked, but still beautiful in its own way, and majestic in a larger quantity.

The horizon here was in a very large quantity, as there was virtually nothing obscuring it, save for the still-visible castle wall, which was, by then, a fair distance behind the little wagon. In all other areas, there it was- one big arc wrapping itself protectively around Brendon’s field of vision, bending around the edges to fit the curves of nearby hills, like one giant seam sewn by some higher power to hold the earth to the sky. Gazing out at such a horizon, Brendon felt like he’d be content with never looking away again.

He never had the opportunity to test that theory, however, because eventually the wagon slowed to a stop, and his thoughts were interrupted by Sarah rather aggressively waving her hand in front of his face. “You still in there?” she said wryly, “Or did all that laborious wagon-riding tire you out?”

Brendon rolled his eyes and pushed her hand away. Then, realizing she was probably alerting him because they had reached their destination, he tore his gaze away from the sky and excitedly brought it down to rest on, well…

To put it simply, it wasn’t how he remembered it.

In the few vague shards of memories that he was still able to call upon from when he’d visited here as a child, the town seemed outright jubilant. Granted, all of these memories were captured during various festivals and celebrations, but even the most basic parts, the pieces outside of the cheering crowds and dancing in the streets, were distinctly different in Brendon’s memory.

When Brendon had first visited, approximately eight years prior, the houses had all been fairly similar to his own cottage; small (or perhaps they were actually average sized, but, having grown up on the grounds of literal castle, Brendon wouldn’t have realized this at such a young age), yet endearing and cozy-looking, with their wooden exteriors scrubbed clean of any collected dust or grime, and little boxes of flowers and small tomato plants sitting beside their doors.

In contrast, he now found himself gazing down at a much less attractive sight. Due to the proximity and position of the wagon in relation to the town, all Brendon could really see was the first few buildings down Main Street, but, judging from those ones, the place wasn’t doing so well. That freshly cleaned wood that the buildings were made of now appeared old and faded, weathered and dirtied to the point of appearing gray instead of the rich, slightly reddish brown it had originally been. Some of it even looked to be rotting away, in which case there were significantly thinner planks of somewhat newer wood nailed haphazardly over the holes. One door still had a flower box beside it, but it had been knocked over, the soil that was once inside it like a dark stain spread out over the cobblestone street.

“It’s…” Brendon began, struggling to find a word to describe the thoughts running through his head without sounding blatantly classist.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” Sarah said in a tone that was more faux-pleasant than Ryan when his father told him to be diplomatic. “Now, I have work to do, so I’d prefer if you went home now. It was nice escorting you on this little excursion of yours.”

“You haven’t even taken me in yet!” Brendon

Sarah gazed up at the sky in exasperation, as if she hoped the heavens could somehow delete Brendon from existence and leave her to her work. “You want to go inside,” she said, her voice sounding flat and thoroughly irritated, though unsurprised. After a few seconds of glaring, she waved a dismissive hand in the air and turned back to face the road “Fine. Just sit still while I’m talking to the guard, and-”

“Guard?” Brendon interrupted, springing quickly into full vigilance as his eyes widened in alarm. He’d barely gotten through their last guard encounter without passing out from fright, and that had been less than an hour ago. He wasn’t sure how much more his anxious heart could take.

Sarah rolled her eyes again as she urged the horse to begin walking again. “Yes, your glorious King has guards stationed down here as well. They don’t much care about people coming in, though, so you should be fine. Just…”- Sarah paused to look Brendon up and down with an oddly scrutinizing expression on her face- “Try not to draw too much attention to yourself.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to-” Brendon began, but fell silent before he could finish the question, because Sarah had pulled on the reins, and they were stopping a few feet away from where the dirt road was overtaken by the cracked cobblestones of what Brendon assumed to be Main Street, beside a bedraggled-looking man that Brendon belatedly realized was the guard Sarah had been referring to, although he didn’t at all resemble any guard Brendon had ever seen.

The guards at the castle were all virtually the same: straight-backed, well-built (Ryan had mentioned taking a certain  _liking_ to at least a handful of them, though he seemed much more into doe-eyed servant boys), and, perhaps most importantly, perfectly orderly. They always stood completely still in their positions, not even breathing heavily enough to make their chain mail jangle. Their clothes were always impeccably straight and dust-free, displaying the Ross family crest proudly on their helmets. They appeared almost too neat to be real, as if they were statues, though they somehow still gave off an aura of alertness and enough preparedness to spring into action at a moment’s notice.

This guard, however, seemed to be the antithesis of all of that, except perhaps the well-built part, as he did appear muscular enough to hold his own in a fight when necessary (though he also looked like the type of person to do so even if  _not_ necessary). His chain mail appeared dull, and was noticeably askew, leaving vulnerable areas along one of his collarbones and the opposite hip. His posture was anything but straight, as he leaned nearly his entire weight on the side of the wagon almost as soon as it rolled up beside him, and Brendon even caught a strong whiff of beer emanating from his sweaty skin. When his eyes landed on Sarah, a crooked grin contorted his oddly reddish face, and he sloppily maneuvered his eyes in what was probably supposed to be a seductive wink. “And who might  _you_ be, young lady?” he asked in a voice that was probably supposed to come across as low and flirtatious but ended up just sounding like he was on the verge of coughing.

Brendon turned to Sarah, expecting to find her glaring down at the man in disgust, but instead, she looked to be almost bored with the encounter, as if it were a common occurrence. “Sarah Orzechowski. Miller’s daughter. I pass by you-”

“Twice a week, yeah, yeah,” the guard interrupted, waving a dismissive hand vaguely in her direction, “and if you ever want to make that three, I’ll always be here.” He flashed her another smile, this one coming across as a full-on leer that gave Brendon a strong urge to shudder.

Sarah, however, continued to appear unphased. “Yes, well, thanks for the offer, but I ought to be getting home right now. Perhaps another day,” she replied, though it didn’t take a scholar to know that she really meant never. She leaned forward to mutter a command to the horse, but unfortunately, the guard wasn’t done.

“Wait!” he commanded, and, for the first time since the conversation began, he actually sounded somewhat like a guard. Having finally gained Sarah’s full attention, he motioned to Brendon and said, “Your friend here hasn’t introduced himself yet. If he doesn’t, I might have to report him to the king”

“I doubt you’ve ever even  _met_ the king,” Brendon said before he could stop himself. Immediately afterwards, his eyes widened with the realization that he probably shouldn’t have been directly insulting a somewhat drunken man with a sharp-looking (if rusty) sword hanging from his belt.

Luckily, the guard only snorted, and seemed to find more humor in Brendon’s words than offense. “Have you?”

Before Brendon could reply, Sarah butted in, which was probably for the best. “No,” she said quickly, “he hasn’t. He’s not from anywhere near here, actually. Traveling merchant. I found him stranded in the hills. Apparently he lost control of his horse.” Although her expression remained completely neutral, Brendon could’ve sworn he caught a slight glimmer of smugness in her eyes, as she was clearly taking pleasure in making him out to be an idiot.

The guard seemed to enjoy the story as well, and shot Brendon an amused sneer that probably would have peeved him were he not so relieved that Sarah had such reliable lying skills. “And does this master horseman have a name?” he drawled.

“Boyd,” Brendon blurted out, “I’m Boyd.” Saying the name made him feel somehow stronger, and he stared the guard down as he repeated it, as if daring him to question it.

The guard held his gaze for a few moments, before stepping back from the wagon (surprisingly, it turned out that he  _was_ capable of standing without leaning on it) and gesturing down the street. “Well,   _Boyd_ ,” he said, his lips still curved up just enough to appear sinister, “Welcome to Timemus.”

Brendon was initially confused by the word, wondering how this mess of a man could possibly have a larger vocabulary than him. However, shortly after they passed the guard, he noticed a large, rather faded wooden plaque on the front of a nearby building reading  _Timemus Town Hall_ and mentally smacked himself when he realized that it was the town’s name (seriously, how had it never occurred to him that the place had a name?).

Despite Brendon’s hopes that Timemus would look somehow better from the street than it did on the outside, it continued to appear just as dreary and run-down as he’d originally observed. He would’ve imagined that at least the town hall would be in somewhat better shape than the surrounding buildings, but it didn’t. In fact, the only thing besides the plaque that distinguished it from a shop or house was its size, as it was about twice as wide as the typical cottage. Besides that, everything looked exactly the same, all the way down to the clear lack of maintenance.

As soon as they were far enough down the street to be sure that the guard wouldn’t overhear him, Brendon turned to Sarah with a shocked look on his face. “What was  _that_?”

Sarah seemed genuinely confused as to what he was referring to. “What was what?”

“That guard!”

“Oh, that’s just Shane,” Sarah replied with disturbing nonchalance, “he’s always like that. I’ve learned to just tune most of it out.”

“And  _he’s_ supposed to protect you from the rebels?” Brendon was incredulous, both at the idea of Shane being able (or willing, for that matter) to ward off even a small-scale rebel invasion. “That’s what he’s here for, isn’t it?”

“That’s what the King says. We’ve got guards like him patrolling this place day and night.” Sarah’s expression looked oddly dark, almost to the point of being bitter, as she spoke. Brendon decided that this must’ve simply been due to Shane’s obvious inadequacy, which, judging from the phrase “guards like him”, was a common trait amongst his comrades.

“If they’re all that bad, someone ought to notify the king about it. It’s really quite unsafe to be out here with virtually no protection.” Sarah was silent, and, out of the corner of his eye, Brendon saw that she was looking at him with a moderately amused glimmer in her eyes. “What?”

“You sound way too educated to pass as one of us. At least  _try_ to get into character,  _Boyd,_ ” she answered, putting an emphasis on Brendon’s chosen fake name as if to make fun of it. “Why  _did_ you choose that name, anyway?”

Brendon shrugged. “You were already lying about my identity. I figured I should use a fake name as well.”

“But why that name in particular?” Sarah pressed.

Brendon shrugged again, but this time he felt slightly uncomfortable as he did it, and wasn’t actually expressing nonchalance. This was partly due to how adamant Sarah sounded in getting an answer, as if mentioning the name hadn’t been a simple tease, as well as how Brendon couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked to someone who didn’t know why that name would be important to him, and wasn’t sure how much of it he actually wanted to reveal. “It was my father’s name,” he said finally, hoping Sarah had the decency not ask for elaboration on the past tense aspect of the statement, “Why?

“Oh, no reason,” Sarah replied lightly, and Brendon chose not to grill her for a legitimate answer, as he was just as content to drop the subject entirely as she seemed to be. Besides, he had other things to focus his attention on, as the wagon was nearing what appeared to be a sort of town square.

In the center of the area was a wooden platform, which Brendon assumed was probably used for delivering proclamations and news to the townspeople. It was square-shaped, and a cobblestone road led out from each of the four sides, making the layout of Timemus roughly form a plus sign, having the four main streets as its arms with smaller, often strangely oriented roads branching off of them, and the town square in the center where the arms intersected.

In Brendon’s memory, this square had been bustling with activity, as it had been the heart of the festivals. The podium was always occupied, whether it be by dancers, musicians, or storytellers, and the perimeter would be lined with vendors selling salivation-worthy food and various little trinkets, such as small toys or pieces of homemade jewelry. It had always been loud, too, though not in an unpleasant, cacophonous way. Somehow, though there could be well over fifty different conversations going on at once, not to mention a song or two, the sounds all managed to create some sort of gleeful harmony together, making the celebrations all the merrier.

Now, though, that harmony was gone, and it had been replaced by such a silence so intense that Brendon felt his heartbeat speed up as if in an attempt to fill it. The square wasn’t just quiet or sparsely populated- it was completely empty (save for Brendon and Sarah), and with that emptiness came that horrible, horrible silence. Indeed, this eerie stillness, along with the the sense of apprehension that accompanied it, made the surrounding air feel so thick, Brendon feared his lungs would reject it and he would suffocate on the spot.

Luckily, before that could happen, a little girl burst out of seemingly nowhere and shattered that silence by running up to the wagon, her bare feet pattering against the cobblestones as she squealed “Sarah!” at a pitch Brendon previously wouldn’t have believed to be possible for a human voice to reach. When she got to about two feet away, she practically launched herself into the wagon, and for a moment Brendon was sure she had misjudged the height she needed to jump and would ram into the side of the wagon.

Sarah, though, was prepared, and was already leaning over Brendon with her arms outstretched. By what Brendon could’ve sworn was magic, she caught the girl safely in her arms and swung her even higher up into the air before placing her gently down in the back of the wagon. “Bandit Way, you have  _really_ got to stop doing that,” she said, but her tone was affectionate, and she reached out to tousle the girl’s dark hair as she spoke.

Bandit looked incredibly pleased with herself and beamed up at Sarah with a smile so wide that she had to squeeze her eyes shut to even fit it on her face. No more than three seconds after being closed, however, those eyelids snapped back upwards as Bandit remembered Brendon’s existence. She peered up at him curiously, pursing her lips in a comical display of pensiveness, then turned back to Sarah. “Who’s he?”

Sarah glanced sideways at Brendon for a moment before looking back down at Bandit. “A friend,” she answered simply. Probably knowing Bandit wouldn’t be satisfied with that answer if left to dwell on it, she hurriedly changed the subject in order to distract her. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be helping your dad with his baking? You were so excited about it earlier.”

Bandit stuck out her bottom lip in a pout, crossing her skinny arms over her chest. “I’m sick of making bread. I wanna make sweets instead, but daddy says people won’t buy them.”

Sarah continued to stroke Bandit’s hair, but her smile grew a little bit sad, and she gazed around the empty square for a moment. “No, I’m afraid they wouldn’t,” she said softly, almost more to herself than anyone else.

Bandit, of course, heard the words anyway and cocked her head. “But why not? Mommy says people used to eat sweets all the time, so much that they got sick of them, and now they don’t want them anymore. But how could anyone not want sweets? I always want sweets, but I only had them once, when Uncle Mikey gave me a  _cookie_.” She emphasized the word “cookie” as if it were some sort of sacred symbol, making sure to pronounce it correctly. Then, her grin dropped, and she turned her head to gaze forlornly off into the distance. “I miss Uncle Mikey,” she said, her voice suddenly woeful.

It was then that Brendon noticed just how emaciated Bandit looked. Though most of her body was engulfed in a pale blue dress that most definitely desired some growing into, the scrawny limbs that stuck out of it were just that: scrawny, and not in a way Brendon had ever seen before. Brendon had seen skinny; after all, he himself had a fairly small frame, and was still nothing compared to Ryan, who Brendon was pretty sure had thighs smaller than some of the guards’ arms. But both he and Ryan, though skinny, were both clearly still  _healthy_ , with rounded cheeks and at least enough meat on their bones to keep their skin from drooping.

Bandit, however, was a completely different story. If Ryan’s appendages were twigs, hers were the slivers made if one tried to shave the bark off of one of them. Granted, she was nowhere near fully grown, but she looked to be about five or six, and Sarah, who didn’t appear to have all that much between her bones and skin either (though she’d proven herself able to carry sacks of produce to the pantry, so she must’ve been at least a little bit stronger than Brendon) had been able to pick her up almost as easily as someone would an infant. Her face also appeared only a few steps away from skeletal, with cheekbones that were much too prominent, especially for a child, and had distinct hollows underneath them. It was truly a wonder she was still so energetic in that state.

Sarah flashed her an empathetic smile and rested a hand on her shoulder. “So do I,” she murmured. Brendon watched this exchange rather awkwardly from his seat beside Sarah, wondering whether he should look away in order to give them at least a little bit of privacy in what was clearly an emotional moment. Before he could figure out what to do, though, the door of a building on the corner with a large, somewhat faded sign reading “Bakery” on the front swung open, and out stepped a woman with nearly the exact same hair color as Bandit, though hers looked much thicker. “Bandit!” she called down the street, “Your dad needs some help kneading the dough!”

Sarah cupped  her hands around her mouth to amplify her voice as she shouted, “She’s over here, Lindsey!”

The woman- Lindsey- whirled around. When she caught sight of the wagon, she smiled warmly and made her way over to it. “Sarah!” she greeted, “I should’ve known. Little Miss B’s always been fond of you, hasn’t she?” She directed the last bit at Bandit, giving her a playful poke in the stomach before lifting her out of the wagon and into her arms. Just after she turned around to walk back to her shop, she stopped and looked back at Sarah over her shoulder. “Oh, by the way, bring one less bag than usual when you deliver the flour this week. It’s, well…” She trailed off and let out a heavy sigh. “Business isn’t the best right now.”

Sarah let out a matching sigh and looked, yet again, across the empty square, which further confirmed Brendon’s suspicious that it hadn’t been this bleak. “No one’s is.”

Lindsey nodded her grim agreement and took a few moments to gaze off in the same direction Sarah was. Soon, however, Bandit began to tug impatiently on her hair, bringing her out of her thoughts with a smile. “Well, I should be getting back. Good seeing you, Sarah,” she said, hoisting Bandit a little higher up and turning back around.

“Good seeing you, Sarah!” Bandit echoed in an exaggeratedly low tone, which was probably supposed to be an imitation of a more adult voice than her natural one. Both Sarah and Lindsey laughed, causing Bandit to giggle along with them, though Brendon doubted she actually knew what she was laughing about.

Sarah continued to gaze after the pair until they had completely disappeared into the bakery, at which time she turned back to Brendon. “Well, now you’ve seen it,” she said, and Brendon was taken aback by the sudden venom in her tone, which was the polar opposite of the tender affection she had shown Bandit mere moments before. She gestured around the square with a wide sweep of her hand. “The security system, the houses, the streets, hey- you even got to catch a glimpse of some of those  _exotic_ locals in their natural habitat!”

“I… I’m not here for  _adventure_ …” Brendon stuttered, subconsciously shrinking away from Sarah in an attempt to escape her wrath.

Sarah scoffed in the same way she did when Brendon had tried to defend King George’s desire to keep Brendon safely within the castle walls. “Oh, so what exactly  _are_ you here for, then?” she fired back.

“The truth!” Brendon exclaimed. When Sarah didn’t immediately dismiss the words, he gained enough confidence in the statement to sit up straight again and repeat it, this time in a much calmer tone. “I just want to know the truth.”

For what felt like an eternity, Sarah stared into Brendon’s eyes with so much intensity she could probably kill a small animal with a single glance. Brendon, however, forced himself hold her gaze, using his calamity to counter her furiousness in what Brendon considered to be the most epic battle of the wills since he and Ryan had argued about whether or not eggs belonged on toast (which they totally did, and Ryan was a stubborn idiot for not thinking the same).

Finally, much to Brendon’s relief (he honestly wasn’t sure how much longer he could’ve gone before bursting into flames under that scorching glare), Sarah tore her gaze away from his and turned to face the front of the wagon. “Fine,” she huffed as she picked up the reins, and, for just a moment, Brendon could’ve sworn he sensed a strange sadness- almost forlorn in nature- behind her anger. “I’ll show you the truth.” Leaving those words to float ominously in the air between herself and Brendon, Sarah urged the horse forwards and began steering it towards the street to the left of the one through which they had entered the square.

How was it, Brendon wondered, that she could concede to his request and yet simultaneously give the impression that she was doing everything but?

As they made their way down the street, Brendon peered intently at the surrounding buildings. He kept expecting the scenery to change- perhaps for them to reach an area with slightly larger houses, or at least ones that looked as if they had received proper maintenance at any time within the past ten years. When it had become clear that he would come across no such place, Brendon found himself desperate just to see a human being besides himself or Sarah somewhere on that empty street.

But that desire was apparently not destined to be fulfilled either, and the street continued to be eerily silent. The longer this emptiness went on, the more worrying it became- after all, it was a day of fairly pleasant weather, and there surely must’ve been at least a few children in the area yearning to play out in the sunlight. Even that weren’t so, there had to be at least one family living on this street in need of a loaf of bread or bundle of carrots, which they would have to go buy from someone else. But, despite all of Brendon’s reasonings as to why at least  _someone_ should’ve been out and about, he didn’t glimpse a single sound throughout the entire ride (which, granted, only lasted about five minutes, but it felt much, much longer). It got to the point where, if Sarah had turned to him and said that every living creature in the world besides the ones touching that wagon had mysteriously dissolved into thin air, Brendon likely would’ve believed her.

Eventually the lack of life forms became so disturbing, Brendon felt the need to verbally acknowledge it, partly in an attempt to get an explanation as to why it was so, as well as to assure himself that he was not the only one experiencing it, as he had was quite honestly beginning to question his own sanity. “It’s so… empty,” he said, and although he could’ve sworn he had used a typical speaking volume, or perhaps one even a little softer, his voice sounded just as shocking and disruptive as a cannonball hitting a glass wall as it cut through the silence.

Sarah’s laugh was harsh and cynical, and Brendon began mentally preparing himself for another onslaught of unconstrained (and, from his perspective, somewhat unfounded) fury. When she spoke, though, her tone wasn’t angry in the same red-hot, almost-ready-to-explode way it had been back in the square, but instead sounded cold and bitter, which was almost worse, as it didn’t point towards a clear issue to confront, only implied that there was one. “Yeah,” she said, “that’s what happens when you haul all the beggars off to debtor’s prison.” That insinuation, of course, only opened up more questions in Brendon’s mind, but he didn’t dare ask any of them for fear of further angering Sarah, and managed to force himself into silence for the rest of the ride.

Just when Brendon began to seriously consider jumping off the wagon, running over to the nearest house, and kicking down some unsuspecting family’s door just to prove to himself that the human race did indeed still exist, Sarah tugged sharply on the reins, bringing the horse to a sudden stop. Brendon looked up from the house he had been staring at- this one happened to have a broken window that no one had bothered to board up, and part of the roof appeared one rainstorm away from collapsing- and was surprised to see that the cobblestone road ended no more than five feet away, where it gave way to a dirt one that led perhaps ten more feet up to a large (at least, in comparison to the surrounding buildings) flour mill. Brendon was suddenly reminded of how Sarah had stated her identity to that awful guard (Brendon was rather delighted to find that he couldn’t recall his name- Shawn, maybe?) as “Sarah Orzechowski, miller’s daughter” and realized that this must be her father’s mill.

Sarah threw her arms wide to gesture around at their still-bleak surroundings. Across from the house with the sagging roof,  there was a cottage with all its openings boarded up, including the door, save for a large hole near one of the windows that looked to be man-made, as the wood around it was clearly splintered, as if it had been forcefully broken, instead of just rotted away on its own accord. In any case, what little of the house he could glimpse through that hole appeared dark and void of any people or furniture, which only reinforced the theory that all of humanity had just spontaneously vanished in the five or so minutes it had taken to get from the square to their current location. Brendon considered asking about the whereabouts of whoever had once lived in the house, as they clearly didn’t inhabit it anymore, but thought better of it when he saw the still bitter expression on Sarah’s face. “Welcome to reality,” she said in a tone that told Brendon he most certainly was not welcome at all.

Before Brendon could even begin to formulate an acceptable response, the door of the mill swung open, and out stepped a woman wearing a stained apron over her faded dress and holding a metal bowl in one hand and a small rag, presumably to be used as a dishtowel, in the other. Her expression was stern, and Brendon hoped he hadn’t made Sarah late enough to get in trouble for it, as he assumed this woman was Sarah’s mother. “Sarah! I was wondering when you’d finally-” she began. Her voice faltered, though, when she caught sight of Brendon. Her eyes visibly widened, and the bowl slipped out of her hand and hit a nearby pebble with a loud clang before rolling down the dirt road, which had a slight slope to it, until it finally clattered to a stop when it reached the cobblestones.

Brendon watched the bowl with eyes equally as wide as Mrs.Orzechowski’s, if not more so. When it stopped rolling, he looked up to find Sarah glaring at him and shaking her head, as if he’d done something horrendously wrong simply by existing. With no way to defend himself, as there was really nothing to defend, Brendon could only watch in silence as Sarah climbed down from the wagon and rushed over to her mother, who was beginning to tremble, and ushered her inside the mill, presumably to correct whatever misconceptions had caused such a drastic reaction.

After a few moments of apprehensive silence, Brendon gingerly made his way over to the bowl, figuring that picking it up might at least improve Mrs. Orzechowski’s opinion of him. Just when his fingers were about to graze the scratched surface, though, a deep, obviously male voice said, “Don’t touch that.”

Brendon jerked his hand away in surprise and looked up to find a tall, dark-haired boy watching him from beside the mill. He looked to be a few years younger than Brendon, perhaps fourteen or fifteen, and had the same grayish-blue eye color and sharp jawline as Sarah. He also appeared to have the same hair color, though it was hard to tell, as his hair was cut short and close to his head (even more so than Brendon’s, which felt too long as soon as soon as it went any farther than brushing his ears), as was customary with males of lower status. Because of this resemblance to Sarah, Brendon assumed that this boy was probably a sibling of hers.

The boy made his way over to where Brendon was standing in quick, angry strides. When he reached the bowl, he bent down and picked it up, and when he stood back up again, shot Brendon a narrow-eyed glare that would give even Sarah a run for her money. “I’ll fight you, you know.”

Brendon was taken back by the statement, as the hostility had come from seemingly nowhere. “You’ll… what?” he stuttered, hoping he’d somehow heard wrong.

The boy continued to stare him down in the same way a wolf would to an intruder on its territory. He flicked his gaze up and down Brendon’s body, as if to size him up. “They should’ve sent another man. Or a bigger one, at least. I can definitely take you.”

“I… I don’t think you’re…”  Brendon looked at the boy with wide, panicked eyes and cleared his throat. “Why… why do you think I’m here, exactly?”

The boy shrugged, though his expression was anything but nonchalant. “I s’pose you’ve raised the taxes again, and we aren’t able to pay them, or something along those lines. In any case, I hope you can live without bread, because there won’t be any flour comin’ outta this mill once you whisk my father off to prison!”

“Your father… you think I’m going to…” Brendon was confused for a moment, but soon, much to Sarah’s brother’s bewilderment, a relieved smile spread across his face, as he’d found the root of the misunderstanding. “Oh, no, I’m not a soldier! I’m just visiting here. Really,” he said quickly, tacking on the “really” when the boy still looked dubious.

The boy opened his mouth to respond, but before he could get a word out, the conversation was interrupted by Sarah’s voice. Both boys turned to see her leaning against the mill with her arms crossed, watching them. “He’s telling the truth, Steve,” she said, “He may be either insane or incredibly stupid, but he’s not here to harm us.”

Even with that reassurance, Steve continued to watch Brendon with narrowed eyes. After a few moments of awkward silence, he shrugged, though he still didn’t look anywhere near welcoming as he muttered a short, “Fine.” With that, he pushed past Brendon and strutted over to the horse, presumably with the intent of leading it and the wagon off to wherever they were normally kept, as Brendon seriously doubted they belonged in the middle of the road.

The horse, however, wasn’t having it, and whinnied disapprovingly as soon as Steve got near it. When he continued to approach it, the horse scraped a hoof threateningly against the cobblestones, notifying everyone watching that it was ready to kick if necessary. Steve let out a frustrated growl and turned to face Sarah. “Sar, your damn horse doesn’t want to-”

“Here,” Brendon interrupted, and both Sarah and Steve watched in surprise as he strode over to stand beside Steve. “What’s her name?” he asked, taking a few cautious steps closer to the horse.

“Bogart,” Steve replied. He sounded rather affronted by the fact that Brendon was helping him, but Brendon chose to ignore his annoyed tone. “ _His_ name is Bogart.”

Brendon nodded. “Hey, Bogart,” he said soothingly. He took another step forward and slowly reached out a hand to stroke Bogart’s forehead. “Hey,” he repeated in the same soft, gentle tone. Once Bogart had been sufficiently calmed, Brendon looked over his shoulder at Steve, who was watching him intently with a look on his face that, if he didn’t know any better, Brendon just might’ve called awe.  _Lead rope?_  he mouthed, not wanting to make too much noise and risk startling Bogart.

“Oh! Yeah, right.” He turned towards Sarah and made an odd gesture with his hands that Brendon supposed vaguely resembled someone leading a horse, though he probably wouldn’t have understood it without context. Sarah, though, seemed to recognize it, as she nodded and disappeared into the mill for a moment, before returning with a thick coil of rope, which she brought up to Brendon. With his nodded consent, she reached up and attached the rope to Bogart’s bridle, giving him a gentle rub on the neck as she did so.

Realizing his work was done, Brendon stepped back, allowing Sarah full control of Bogart. She slid her hand to the free end of the rope and began to lead him towards the mill, with Brendon and Steve following a few feet behind. Just as they were nearing the door of the mill, Sarah turned left, leading Bogart around to the back.

Behind the mill was a long ribbon of water, perhaps not quite wide enough to be considered a river, but Brendon also hesitated to call it a stream, as it was substantial and deep enough to keep the large water wheel that powered the mill turning. Beyond the water, the hills stretched off into the distance until they collided with the sky in that beautiful horizon Brendon had so admired on the ride over. It really was quite a picturesque sight.

Over by the wheel was a sturdy wooden post, maybe a foot taller than Brendon, with a metal ring attached near the top of it. He watched as Sarah looped the lead through this ring and tied it firmly in some sort of intricate and very strong-looking knot before beginning to remove the harness that attached Bogart to the wagon.

It was only then that Steve finally broke the silence. “So, you like horses?” he said, and, though his tone still sounded gruff and guarded, Brendon could tell he was at least trying to make amends for his earlier antipathy **.**

Brendon shrugged. “I used to participate in riding lessons with…” he trailed off, as he was about to say “Prince Ryan”, before he recalled how low Sarah’s opinion of the royal family seemed to be, and how Steve had assumed Brendon was there to take away his father simply because he apparently looked like a castle-dweller, realized that it would probably be best not to bring up his close relationships with first and second members of the line of succession for the the Trepidian throne in conversation. “I mean, I’ve taken lessons,” he corrected, and left it at that.

“Must’ve been good lessons,” Steve remarked, “That horse always gives me a hard time, and we’ve had him since before I was born.”

“Well, do you always approach him as angrily as you did?” Brendon asked. “Horses can sense that stuff, you know. They won’t trust you if the energy’s too negative.” At least, that’s what the Master of Horses at the castle had said, though, while it sounded wise coming out of his mouth, realized after saying it that it did not have the same effect when coming out of his own, and he ended up sounding vaguely like someone who lived in a cave with crystals hanging from the ceiling and told random travelers’ fortunes based on the lines in their hands **.**

Steve seemed to agree with this analysis, and raised his eyebrows, while Sarah turned around momentarily with a smirk on her face. “Brendon grows flowers for a living,” she said pointedly, as if that fact had something to do with the bizarreness of what he’d just said.

Once she’d undone the **l** ast strap on the harness, finally setting Bogart free of the heavy load, Sarah turned back around and glanced up at the sky, where the sun was already nearly a quarter of the way across the sky. “Won’t your royal friends be missing you?” she asked lightly.

Steve’s eyes widened. “ _Royal friends?_ ” he echoed, looking to Brendon for confirmation of the term.

Brendon felt his cheeks redden, which was probably Sarah’s intention. “There’s only two!” he corrected, his tone growing defensive.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Oh, well that makes all the difference.”

Steve, meanwhile, looked incredibly confused, and was gazing with significant bewilderment between Brendon and Sarah. “Two? But there’s only…”

“Three, yeah,” Sarah confirmed, “Brendon here is a bit of a hotshot.”

“I’m not a-” Brendon began, but Sarah cut him off, this time in a much more serious tone.

“Anyway, you really should be going,” she said, “I’d prefer  _not_ to get in trouble with the King, if at all possible.”

Steve somehow managed to widen his eyes even further, which Brendon previously wouldn’t have thought possible. His eyebrows looked about ready to detach from his face entirely and rise up into the heavens. “In trouble with the…” he muttered incredulously, though both Sarah and Brendon ignored him, as Brendon had just come to the realization that he’d never actually planned a method of getting home.

“Well, I know we just put Bogart to away **,**  but…” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, looking at Sarah with pleading eyes.

Sarah put a hand on her hip, and her tone was edging out of the realm of light teasing and into genuine annoyance. “You think  _I’m_ taking you back? In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t exactly get a lot of free time to go wander the streets around here.”

“But how else am I supposed to-”

“You have legs, don’t you?”

“But…” As he wracked his brain for possible comebacks to that, Brendon knew he was grasping at straws. “But what about Shane!” he exclaimed, almost shuddering as he pictured the disheveled, but somehow still menacing guard in his mind.

“Just tell him you’re going searching for that missing horse. There’s a reason I told that particular lie.”

Brendon tried to think of another excuse for why he couldn’t walk all the way home, but found that the only one he could come up with was “ _But it’s such a long way!”_ , which he seriously doubted would do anything but lower Sarah’s opinion of him even further. He sighed and turned to plod back around to the front of the mill, though not before grumbling, “You don’t have to be so  _mean_ about it.”

“Not mean,” Sarah called after him, “only realistic. Because, unlike you,  _some people_ don’t have the privilege not to be.”

**< <>>**

On foot, it took somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes to get to the square instead of five- Brendon didn’t even want to think about how long it would take to reach the castle. At this rate, he doubted he’d get there by lunchtime, and with every passing second, he could feel the list of lies he’d have to tell to hide how he’d truly spent his morning growing exponentially longer.

There were, however, some perks to walking. Now that he was on the ground, he stayed near the edge of the road in case someone on horseback or in a wagon needed to pass (which, if his earlier experiences were any indication, was incredibly unlikely, but he figured it was better to be careful than to get run over). Because of this, he was much closer to the houses, and found that he actually _could_ hear people inside of some of them, though the sounds were faint. In one, for example, he could hear the high-pitched voice of a child asking its mother something about butterflies, though he wasn’t within earshot long enough to hear the response. Inside another house, a chair or other easy-to-move piece of furniture made a high-pitched screeching noise as it scraped against the floor. They were all small, insignificant noises, things that people would normally just tune out. But to Brendon, they were reassuring, as they meant that the town wasn’t completely deserted after all.

He ended up becoming so absorbed in straining his ears to listen for these noises that he didn’t actually notice when he entered the square, and only realized where he was when his toe collided rather painfully with the wooden platform in the center of it. Startled out of his thoughts, he winced and tried to hop around on one leg while he brought the affected foot up into his hands, only to lose his balance and soon found himself sitting dejectedly on the cobblestone ground with both his tailbone and foot feeling as if they were incredibly cross with him. It was in this position that Brendon began mentally recounting the exact chain of events that had led him to that moment, and wondered distantly why he’d ever thought to leave the comfortable security of the world within the castle walls in the first place.

As if the situation weren’t overwhelming enough, it was then that an unfamiliar voice drifted into Brendon’s consciousness. “You lost?”

Startled by the sudden noise, Brendon jerked his head up, looking around wildly. “Who-” he began, only for his eyes to land on the source of the words almost as soon as he opened his mouth.

No more than fifteen feet away, a mule stood at the edge of the square. It looked old and rather weary, as if it had been traveling for a long while, though not in a bad way- no, the animal was a sort of comfortable type of tired, and still looked reasonably strong and sturdy, like a favorite pair of boots that may have worn-down soles and scuff marks on the toes, but is still wearable and much-cherished. This mule had not been broken- simply broken into.

Tethered to the back of this mule was another one with the same travel-worn expression and big, wise eyes. This one was slightly smaller and had a darker coat, but, besides that, was nearly identical to the other. It looked down at Brendon with an almost quizzical expression in its droopy eyes, as if it were questioning what exactly he was doing on the ground. Never in his life had Brendon imagine that a mule could make him feel self-conscious, and yet here he was, sitting with an aching tailbone in the middle of an empty square, with those oddly judgemental eyes watching him.

However, basic common sense led Brendon to the conclusion that it was not the mule who had spoken, but the man perched atop it. Indeed, there was a rider, though one could easily glance right over him among the great quantity of other bags and packages that the mule was also carrying, mostly hanging from a belt-like contraption around the mule’s middle. It didn’t help that he wasn’t a very distinctive man, either- his clothes, which were no doubt far from their original color due to years of dust and fading, probably blended in almost perfectly with the tall, yellowish grass that blanketed the surrounding hills. A thick beard covered most of his face, obscuring his expression, but he seemed oddly non-threatening, especially considering the fact that he was a mysterious man approaching a lone sixteen-year-old kid in the middle of an otherwise empty square.

It was at this point in his thought process that Brendon noticed that the man had raised his eyebrows slightly, and remembered that he had asked a question. “Oh, uh, no,” Brendon said finally, scrambling to his feet as he spoke. “I’m just heading home. This road does lead to the castle, doesn’t it?” he asked, pointing down the road he was now facing, which he was pretty sure was the right one, as he could just make out the Bakery sign on the corner building.

The man guided his mule to move a few steps closer to Brendon. “A castle-dweller, hm? I would bow, but, with this pack, I’m not sure I’d ever be able to stand back up again,” the man said, chuckling lightly as he patted the bulging sack slung over his shoulder, which he must not have been able to fit on the mule.

“Wha- oh, no. I’m just a gardener,” Brendon replied quickly. He stepped a little closer to the man, and noticed that what little of his suntanned skin was visible above the beard was smooth and youthful-looking, suggesting that he could actually be much younger than he had first appeared.

The man knitted brow, but there was a slight twinkle in his eyes, signaling that the confusion was a jest. “Funny, but I’ve never heard of ‘just a gardener.’ Though I do know of “a gardener”, which, if I remember correctly, is another way of saying “literal miracle worker and giver of life.’ Not sure what all that ‘just’ nonsense is about, though.”

Once Brendon had figured out that the statement was one of very high praise (though in an unnecessarily convoluted way, in Brendon’s opinion), he ran a hand rather bashfully through his hair. Luckily, before he had the time to worry himself too much about coming up with an adequate response, the man gestured back at the smaller mule and said, “Well, in any case, you probably have a garden to get back to, don’t you?”

Brendon eyed the mule doubtfully. It had that sturdy, rugged look that all mules seem to adopt, and didn’t look weak by any means, but it was already carrying a sizable load of cargo, and the last thing Brendon wanted to do was end up owing some random traveler an entire mule. Besides, it dawned on him that he didn’t actually know anything about this man, and, since the rolling hills were notoriously identical and easy to get lost in, it was very possible that the stranger could lead him miles off in the wrong direction, whether intentionally or not, on some sort of so-called “shortcut” for a good chunk of time before Brendon actually noticed. “I’m not sure-”

The man cut him off with a vague wave of his hand. “Oh, don’t worry about Clover here. You don’t look too heavy, and she’s carried much bigger loads, haven’t you, girl?” He directed the last bit at the smaller mule, affectionately scratching the underside of her muzzle as he spoke.

Brendon rubbed the back of his neck absentmindedly as he weighed the possibilities. On one hand, he could climb onto Cover’s back, actively placing all of his trust a complete stranger to get him home safely. On the other, he could continue the journey to the castle on foot, which would probably be even more arduous than he’d originally anticipated, seeing as his toe still stung where he’d stubbed it. It would also be slow, and, after all, Brendon technically wasn’t supposed to have gone past the castle gates in the first place, and he’d be lucky if no one had noticed his absence already, let alone after the two plus hours it would probably take him to walk home. Plus, although this option seemed safer at first, there was no guarantee it actually would be, as being on foot would make him very vulnerable to the potential threat of bandits or wild animals.

Eventually, Brendon decided that the cons of walking home greatly outweighed the pros, and he would be better off going with this stranger, despite the obvious risks. After all, he wasn’t carrying anything, so he doubted the man was seeking to rob him. With this in mind, he accepted the ride home with a single nod, hoping he hadn’t made a grave mistake.

The man reached down and stroked Clover’s forehead to keep her calm as Brendon mounted. It was a rather awkward process, as, though Brendon really had participated in a few of Ryan’s riding lessons, it had been a few years since he’d done so, and those ones had always had saddles and were much more accustomed to having riders, as from what Brendon could tell, Clover was typically used for carrying inanimate objects instead of people. “I’m Jon, by the way,” the man said as Brendon positioned himself carefully on the animal.

“Brendon,” Brendon said, though the introduction was rather absent-minded, as he was busy trying to position his legs in a way that was comfortable but didn’t disturb any of the bags strapped to Clover’s flank. Forgetting whatever small bit of caution he’d been clinging to, he peered into one curiously, spotting a wooden doll, a bundle of cloth, and a hollow stick that appeared to be some sort of instrument. “What  _are_ all these?” he asked.

“A nosy gardener, aren’t you?” Jon said with a light chuckle. Brendon opened his mouth to apologize, but Jon cut him off before the words even left his mouth. “It’s a good trait. One that not many people of your status seem to have.” As he spoke, he nudged his mule’s flank with the toe of one of his boots, and the animal responded by beginning to take

Brendon was about to object and reiterate that he was a mere gardener and certainly didn't occupy a place in society any higher than Jon’s own. But then he remembered that little girl working at the blacksmith’s, with her ragged dress and dull, sunken eyes, and how, at that age, he himself had been happily skipping around the castle, enjoying numerous games of tag with a prince and princess. He thought back to Bandit, and how frail and undernourished her little body had appeared, and compared that image to his own meals with the royal family in front of a table laden with rich, expensive dishes that they rarely finished even half of. As the train of thought hurried down Brendon’s spine in the form of a disturbed shiver, he realized that perhaps he wasn’t as low in status as he’d thought.

“Anyway, those bags just so happen to hold the key to a happy life,” Jon continued amiably as he steered his own mule, with Clover following, in a more direct route to the castle. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Brendon jerked his hand away from the bag he had been peering into, as, if it really were something that important, he had a feeling Jon wouldn’t want him touching it. No more than a second later, though, he leaned down to peek into another bag, which also carried a seemingly random assortment of items, including a hairbrush, a boot, and a roll of parchment.

“The key to a happy life is… a shoe?” Brendon said with a great amount of confusion seeping into his voice. He wondered if it had been a foolish decision to get on this mule, as he was now beginning to worry about Jon’s sanity, and doubted whether he should’ve been trusting his sense of direction.

Jon threw back his head to let out a hearty laugh. “I’m a merchant. These,” he said, gesturing to a cluster of bags near his leg, “are my wares.”

“So being a merchant is the key to a happy life?” Brendon replied doubtfully. The explanation had reassured him of Jon’s sanity, but he still didn’t quite agree with the statement.

“The lifestyle is, yeah. Just me, Dylan, and Clover, never tied down, with each day different from the last. What more could you want?”

Brendon raised an eyebrow. “Stability?” When Jon only shrugged, he resorted to the very Ryan-esque tactic of acting a know-it-all in order to… well, in all honesty, Brendon had no idea what the point of this strategy was, or even why he was choosing to continue this debate at all, but, by the time he thought all of that through, his mouth was already moving. “There’s a word for that, you know,” he said, “vagabond.”

“Vagabond,” Jon repeated, as if to taste the word on his tongue. He nodded slowly. “I like that.”

"It means you don’t live anywhere.”

Jon laughed again, though this one was much less animated than the last. “Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” said Jon, “the only way a person could live nowhere is if they weren’t alive at all.”

Brendon found that he didn’t have a logical rebuttal to that. “Where  _do_ you live, then?” he pried, partly because he hoped the question would locate a flaw in Jon’s noticeably unconventional philosophy, but also because he was genuinely curious as to what the answer would be.

Jon spread his arms wide and gestured off into farthest reaches of the horizon. “Where do I not?”

**< <>>**

Probably due to the heavy load they were carrying, the mules were significantly slower than Sarah’s wagon, and, in Brendon’s estimation, the journey back to the castle ended up taking nearly twice as long as the one to Timemus. Still, it was much faster (not to mention easier) than walking, and, much to Brendon’s relief, there didn’t appear to be anyone waiting for him at the castle gates when he finally got close enough to see them clearly, meaning it was possible that no one had noticed his absence, or at least not bothered to do anything about it.

Per Brendon’s request, Jon dropped Brendon off at the base of the hill on which the castle was built, as if he did end up getting in trouble, Brendon didn’t want to accidentally drag Jon into it. When Brendon tried to thank Jon for going out of his way to take him home, Jon only smiled a rather enigmatic smile, made even more mysterious by the fact that his beard almost completely obscured it, and gazed out over the surrounding plains. “See, that’s the trouble will that stability of yours- always got a ‘way’ to be taken out of.”

Andy and Joe let him by without question, which was another good sign, as he figured that if he  _were_ in trouble with the King, they would be the ones in charge of apprehending him. He initially considered seeking out Ryan and Z, as his disturbing experiences in Timemus had most certainly brought up some questions about exactly how fairly their father ruled his kingdom, but realized it would probably look suspicious if he came back from a mysterious disappearance with questions about a place he’d been forbidden from going to no more than a week prior. Because of this, instead of entering the castle, he went around to the back, deciding that he might as well get some work done in the garden.

As luck would have it, however, he wasn’t the only one who’d decided to spend some time among the foliage, as he soon spotted none other than the two people he’d decided not to go looking for scarcely a minute before. Z was sitting daintily on a stone bench situated beside a patch of what would soon be tulips, though they were only about two weeks past their chilling time (tulips required between ten and sixteen weeks in cold temperatures before they started growing), so at that time the patch just looked like a rectangle of dark soil with little bits of green stubble poking through. She sat with her back completely straight, holding a small book not high enough to obscure her face, but not so low that she had to hunch over to read it.  

A few feet away, Ryan was perched on a large rock, with one foot resting on the end of Z’s bench. The other foot was on the rock, as he had his knee bent, with one bony elbow resting atop it as he used the other arm to support his back and shoulders. He was gazing off into the distance, either at the sky or the top of the castle wall, a gentle breeze catching his long curls as they hung freely down from his tilted-back head and causing them to twirl and dance. As Brendon watched, he tilted his chin down slightly to make some comment to Z, causing her lips to curve into a slight smile, before looking back up at whatever he’d been gazing at.

In short, it was a beautiful scene. The leaves of a nearby vine cast intricate shadows across Ryan and Z’s bodies, which somehow accentuated their regal postures. In the places not darkened by the shadows, small jewels and gold-colored embroidery on their clothes glittered in the sunlight. They looked almost too perfect, like something out of a dream, or even a heaven.

Only a few hours ago, Brendon would’ve accepted this image as simply that- beautiful. The sun was out, the garden was sprouting, and his two best (and, quite honestly, only) friends were beautiful and happy and sitting in a picturesque tableau not twenty feet away from him.

But now, when he saw the imported pearls stitched into the neckline of Z’s dress, he couldn’t help but think of Bandit’s bony ankles, looking ready to snap at any moment, and how Steve had mentioned tax collection. Then, he remembered that empty house near the mill, with all the windows and doors boarded up, and how many others just like it he’d noticed on his walk back to the square.

Brendon had always known that the Ross family was beautiful. But, for the first time, it was beginning to dawn on him that perhaps that beauty came at a cost, and they weren’t the ones having to pay for it.

It was Z who noticed him first, which really wasn’t surprising- Brendon sometimes wondered if Ryan’s vision was even able to register people other than Ryan himself. ‘Brendon!” she greeted warmly. She closed her book and placing it neatly in her lap before pushing Ryan’s foot off the opposite end of the bench (much to his chagrin) and patting the now-empty space, beckoning for him to sit beside her. Brendon smiled as he did so, but he felt something in his chest tighten, as, if anyone were to have noticed his absence, it would’ve been Ryan and Z.

Sure enough, as soon as Brendon sat down, he turned his head to find Ryan watching him through narrowed eyes. “You weren’t at breakfast,” he said. His tone was accusatory, as if Brendon had skipped the affair in order to personally spite him. The unspoken question behind the words was clear, and, like any question Ryan asked, it demanded an answer.

An amateur in the field of dealing with Ryan may have faltered in this situation, and end up coughing up some glaringly faulty lie that even an idiot could see through. Brendon, however, navigated his way around the subject of his whereabouts with ease, choosing to distract Ryan and draw him mentally far enough away from the question that he forgot about it altogether.

In other, far less pretentious words, Brendon decided to make fun of him. He stuck out his bottom lip and widened his eyes in mock-sympathy. “Aw, did wittle princey-wincey miss his big, strong gardener?”

Ryan crossed his arms and tilted his chin up in that annoyingly superior manner of his. “I can have you hanged, you know.”

Brendon threw his hand over his mouth in an exaggerated gasp. “Careful!” he exclaimed, “People might think you’re becoming a tyrant!”

Z waved a hand dismissively in Ryan’s direction. “Oh don’t worry, only those destined to be king can do that,” she said airily, her eyes crinkling up in amusement. Brendon almost fell off the bench laughing, while Ryan shot Z an unamused glare, which of course only made it funnier, and the sun shone down on their smiling (at least, in Brendon and Z’s cases) faces, and everything was as it always had been.

That night, Ryan took Brendon up to the tower in the private wing to watch the setting sun breathe fire into the darkening sky, and, as he stood there, gazing out over the plains with Ryan’s shoulder brushing up against his, Brendon knew that that morning would not be his last visit to Timemus.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “loiter sack.” I fuckin love medieval insults lmao  
> Also, is Jon’s reverence toward gardeners a reference to the Stoner Jon™ trope??? Could “these bags just so happen to hold the key to a happy life” be about weed if you take it out of context?? The world may never know  
> Oh and thirdly, shoutout to dancetothisbeat for giving me jon's cats' names. I may have misgendered them in here bc I didn't change the pronouns from what it was before but oh well


	6. V: The Only Witness To It All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been way too long (sorry). I was busy and then I had writer's block and then I kept writing random gabilliam shit and... yeah  
> Btw have any of you ever read any of breakfastbeebo's fics? Because if you haven't I HIGHLY recommend them. I've reread The Way Home From Nowhere way too many times.

“You know, I always thought those stories about the upper class being legitimately insane were made up until I met you.”

It was the Thursday after Brendon’s first visit to Timemus, three Thursdays after his first encounter with Sarah. Brendon found that he had begun to measure his life in Thursdays (which he supposed was the same as measuring in weeks, but that didn’t sound nearly as poetic). Friday through Wednesday, his life was just as it always had been- a reasonably pleasant series of events, comprised almost entirely of working in the garden, conversing with Ryan and Z in his leisure time, and listening politely to mealtime conversation in the presence of King George. Though he wouldn’t go as far as to call it a monotonous existence, it certainly did follow a fairly simple pattern, which it hadn’t often strayed from for a majority of his life. It was, in short, predictable.

Thursdays, though, were pages from a completely different story, suddenly sprinkled in with all those other days to mix it up. Thursday mornings, Brendon woke up with barely an inkling of what he might do that day, and was likely to continue not to know until whatever was in store was already happening. For instance, on this particular Thursday, though he was reasonably certain he would at least see Sarah making her weekly delivery, and was determined to get her to stop and talk to him, he had no way of knowing how she’d react to his request for another trip to Timemus, much less what that trip (if it did indeed happen) would hold.

As it turned out, Sarah had indeed agreed to take him, and luckily without all that much argument (in fact, Brendon thought idly that she might be warming up to him a bit, albeit at a gradual pace). Hence why Brendon was currently seated beside Sarah in the front of her wagon, preparing to launch himself into what certainly wasn’t his first defense of the right to label himself as “working class” that day. 

Though Sarah’s words were sharp and probably meant to be scathing, her tone somehow still managed to sound pleasant to Brendon’s ears, as if she were complementing the scenery instead of insulting him. Brendon supposed that was the magic of the plains- someone could probably run up at that moment and shoot an arrow into his chest, and it would feel like a beautiful thing.

Despite that pleasurability, however, Brendon was not about to give up on that argument so easily.  “I’m not upper class!” he protested, not even bothering to turn and face Sarah as he replied to her statement; they’d had nearly this exact conversation so many times that response was practically compulsory, despite him being not as entirely sure of the claim as he had once been.

“Mm-hm. And when was the last time you cooked your own dinner?” This reply was also expected, or at least something similar, whether it be about Brendon’s health, hygiene, clothes, education, or financial stability. 

Regardless, Brendon didn’t have a sufficient answer to the question, so he simply let out an indignant huff. “Well, I’m not insane,” he said after a moment, because if he couldn’t successfully disprove the “upper class” part of Sarah’s statement, he could at least object to the rest of it.

“Last I checked, sane people don’t willingly return to towns in which the inhabitants all want nothing more than to escape.”

Brendon sighed, as this was also a conversation they’d had before. This time, though, he at least bothered to turn to look at Sarah when he spoke, because this statement he actually did believe in. “I just wanna understand what’s going on.”

Sarah held his gaze for a few moments, as if she were searching for something in his expression. Whatever it was, she apparently didn’t find it, because, after a few moments, she tore her gaze away and returned it to the stretch of road in front of the wagon. “To each their own, I guess,” she said, which Brendon supposed was a sort of surrender, but somehow didn’t feel nearly as satisfying as he imagined it would. He watched her for a few moments, wondering if he should continue the argument in the hopes of gleaning an actual admission that he was right, but soon thought the better of it and instead resumed gazing out over the rolling hills in silence.

It was a truly beautiful day, just as it had been on the prior Thursday. Although there had been some rain earlier in the week, as is expected for early spring, this day was, so far, dry, with the sun hanging reliably over the horizon, unobscured by any sullen, gray rainclouds. Because if this, it was able to shine down on the tall prairie grass, bringing out its golden tint, and even made the dark, thick forested area beyond the plains look a bit lighter and less intimidatingly mysterious. A slight breeze scurried across the land, no harder than the air current created around a child’s body when they run across a field while playing tag. It was gentle, but cool enough to dull the heat of the sunny day to a nearly perfect degree. It was also strong enough to pick a few strands of Brendon’s hair up off his neck and forehead, which, besides serving as a reminder to Brendon that he ought to cut them soon, made the strands twirl playfully around each other.

Oddy, Brendon found himself attempting to imagine Ryan out there, the ends of his long curls dancing in the breeze as he gazed down the road with one of those perfectly inscrutable expressions of his. With a bit of a jolt, Brendon realized he’d never seen any of the Royal family with the gray stone of the castle or the surrounding wall in the background. Perhaps, out here, with only the horizon as a backdrop, the color scheme would bring out warmer hues in Ryan’s pale skin, maybe making him look a bit less like some sort of porcelain doll with his unabating composure and smooth skin and hair. A little humanization might be good for him, Brendon decided.

They rode along like this for a good while, Brendon slowly becoming lost in his own pondering, until Sarah elbowed him sharply in the side, jolting him back into reality. “Hey,” she said, and her voice came out in a sort of hissing whisper, though there was no one besides Brendon close enough to overhear her. She jerked her head down the road, and Brendon followed her gaze to see that the town was now much more than just a speck in the distance, and was in fact close enough for Brendon to make out a slumped figure, whom he assumed to be Shane, leaning against the side of the nearest building.

“We’re almost there,” Sarah continued, drawing Brendon’s attention back to herself. “Remember the story?”

Brendon nodded hurriedly, the words already flowing (or, more accurately, stumbling) from his mouth. “I happened to be nearby, and decided I wanted to visit in order to-”

Sarah cut him off with light (though still, in Brendon’s opinion, uncalled for) kick to the shins. “Well don’t tell  _ me _ ,” she said, “and wrap your arm around me while you’re talking.”

Brendon knitted his brows. He wasn’t sure he’d ever intentionally touched Sarah before, much less grabbed her by the waist. “Why would I-”

“Just trust me,” Sarah replied, interrupting him again. Brendon opened his mouth to question her further, but closed it after Sarah glanced pointedly towards the town, which was now less than fifty yards away. Sarah turned to face forward again, and Brendon did the same, watching the dingy, rather depressing-looking buildings lining Main Street grow ever nearer.

It didn’t take any more than a minute or two before they reached the town, and Sarah pulled Bogart to a stop beside Shane, who had managed to pull himself into a standing position upon the wagon’s arrival, though, despite the sun being positioned almost directly to his left, and therefore nowhere near his line of sight, he was noticeably squinting, as if he was hungover.

“Sarah Orzechowski,” Sarah began immediately, just as she had the previous Thursday, “miller’s da-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shane interrupted, waving a dismissive hand just close enough to her face to be uncomfortable. Instead of focusing on her, he turned to Brendon with an odd sort of leer on his face that was comparable to the way a cat might look at the mouse it was about to pounce on if cats had more humanoid facial features. “You could tell me, however, what  _ he’s  _ doing here. Boyd, isn’t it? Lose your horse again?”

Brendon swallowed his urge to shrink away from the strongly liquor-scented cloud of rank breath that wafted out of Shane’s mouth along with his words, and instead cleared his throat and forced himself to speak with all the clarity and convincingness he could muster. “No, unfortunately, I, uh, I never managed to find her. I’m on foot now, until I get ahold of a new horse.” Brendon paused to gauge Shane’s reaction to his words, as there had still been a bit of nervousness evident in his voice, which he feared might give away the fact that he was lying. If anything, though, that slight stuttering helped feed into Shane’s perceived superiority, and may have actually helped Brendon’s case. 

Realizing this, Brendon’s confidence grew significantly, and, in his humble opinion, was able to recite the rest of his statement with nearly impeccable believability. “Anyway,” he I happened to find myself in the area and decided to come and-” suddenly remembering Sarah’s instructions, Brendon threw an arm around her waist, hoping the gesture didn’t appear too haphazard, and pulled her closer until he felt one of her hipbones slam against his, and had to bite down on his lip to keep himself from wincing, “-show my gratitude.” He glanced down at Sarah, hoping for some confirmation that his performance had been satisfactory, to find her looking up at him with distinctly uncharacteristic, almost sultry expression on her face.

Finally understanding the implication Sarah was trying to suggest, Brendon looked back at Shane with what he hoped to be an adequate approximation of the smirk Ryan always flashed when he mentioned certain male servants, with his eyebrows quirked and lips-ever-so slightly curled up into a slyly boastful smile. 

Although Brendon was sure he was nowhere near nailing the expression, it was apparently good enough for Shane, because a rather deviously amused grin spread slowly across his face as he looked between the two of them. “Is that so?” he said, to which Sarah let out a breathy giggle and leaned her head on Brendon’s shoulder. Shane’s smile grew into something halfway between a smirk and a sneer as he watched her for a few seconds before turning to Brendon. “Well,” he said with an unsettling glimmer in his eyes, “can’t get in the way of a man’s needs, can I?” Then, just when Brendon was absolutely sure the encounter couldn’t possibly get any more disturbing, Shane leaned in close to his ear and murmured, “Careful, though, she seems like a feisty one.”

Brendon swallowed the bile rising in his throat and had to use all of his willpower just to keep himself from pulling away from Shane’s hot, foul breath on his neck, which was starting to make his hair stand on end. “Just how I like ‘em,” he managed to choke out. His voice came out much too strained to be convincing, but Sarah let out another delighted giggle right afterward to detract from it, and Shane remained satisfied with the ruse. Still smirking, he finally stepped back to a more comfortable distance away from the wagon and, much to Brendon’s relief, waved them down the street without another word. 

Sarah kept her head on Brendon’s shoulder as she guided the horse past the first few buildings in case Shane happened to glance back at them. As uncomfortable as he felt, Brendon kept his arm stiffly wrapped around her waist until they’d reached what Sarah apparently deemed to be a safe distance down the street. At that point, much to Brendon’s relief, she lifted her head off his shoulder, and he yanked his arm away from her body so fast he nearly hit it on the side of the cart.

“What, am I not your type?” Sarah joked, her mouth curving into an amused half-smile as a clearly flustered Brendon shoved his hands into his trouser pockets.

“What? Oh, no, you’re very pretty, it’s just…” Much to Sarah’s apparent amusement, Brendon stumbled over his words and ended up falling silent, unsure as to how to finish the sentence. He wasn’t lying, though, when he said she was pretty- despite her generally tired, dirt-smudged appearance, she had quite a beautiful face- and, for all Brendon knew, she could’ve been exactly his type, and he simply hadn’t realized it yet. Interestingly enough, attraction wasn’t something that often crossed his mind. He supposed this might be odd for a sixteen-year-old, as he knew many people, particularly in the lower classes, were married by the time they reached his age. Brendon had never really considered having a wife, though. The servant girls he occasionally shared casual conversations with seemed nice enough, and he could tell that several of them found him attractive, but the only girl he’d ever really been close with was Z, who was, of course, off limits, as well as having a relationship with him that was far too platonic for romance. All things considered, Brendon didn’t particularly mind the idea of remaining single, and besides, _someone_ needed to stick around and entertain Ryan after everyone else became preoccupied with their spouses.

“It just felt creepy, that’s all. Playing along with everything Shane was saying,” Brendon said finally, remembering the matter at hand. 

Sarah shrugged, just as unaffected by Shane’s inappropriate behavior as she had been the first time Brendon had encountered it. “They just like to make themselves feel powerful. A bit like the family employing them, in that respect.” She added the second part as a clear afterthought, though it was, of course, what Brendon responded to first.

“The Rosses aren’t like that!” Brendon exclaimed, coming to the royal family’s defense more due instinct than anything else. As soon as the words left his mouth, however, he recalled the way King George II commanded respect simply with his presence, and had virtually no qualms about coercing that reverence out of any who did not readily offer it to him, and realized that perhaps his argument wasn’t exactly infallible. “Well, the not all of them, at least.” This, in fact, wasn’t entirely true either; in fact, one might go as far as to say that Ryan’s entire life philosophy was based on wanting to feel important. Even Z, with all her bright, promising ideas on how she’d someday run the kingdom as a fair, generous ruler, was somewhat guilty of it- no one could be that ambitious without being a little bit self-important. Still, Ryan and Z’s cravings for importance were much different than that of their father. Z tried her hardest to remain as approachable as possible despite her status, and no matter how conceited and self-righteous Ryan acted, he knew the line between evoking annoyance and fear, and was careful not to cross it.

Of course, in Brendon’s opinion, this would all be extraordinarily hard to explain to someone who hadn’t known Ryan and Z for as long as he had, especially if that person was staunchly anti-monarch. For this reason, instead of trying to further maintain his argument, Brendon chose to switch to a tactic he’d learned straight from the famous (and somewhat infamous) Prince Ryan himself: changing the subject. “Anyway, what do you mean, ‘they’? Are the other guards like this as well?” He’d almost forgotten any guards besides Shane existed, as he hadn’t seen them patrolling the streets- perhaps, if Sarah’s statement was truthful, they were all passed out in an alehouse somewhere, just letting their salaries from the King’s treasury pile up. Brendon found himself clenching his fists at the thought of it.

Again, Sarah seemed much more nonchalant than she should’ve been. “Typically, yes. Outside of market days, they mostly stick to the farms and the perimeter of town, though, so they aren’t nearly as intrusive, as long as you don’t approach them. Some days they don’t even leave their lodging,” she said with a shrug, “Can’t exactly blame them for that one. It’s one of the only buildings in town that isn’t falling apart.”

“But that’s not fair at all!” Brendon exclaimed, “Surely, if someone could only get word to King George about this, surely he’d have them replaced with more adequate men.” When Sarah only snorted in response (which Brendon couldn’t really blame her for, as he knew firsthand just how unapproachable King George II seemed), he continued on his tirade. “And if they’re all like Shane, I can’t imagine they’d have much of a chance of stopping a Rebel invasion. I mean, he looked like he’d been out at an alehouse all night!”

“Yeah, well”- Sarah let out a puff of air through her nose in a cynical sort of half-laugh in that manner that made Brendon feel as if there were some sort of joke that he wasn’t in on- “keeping people out isn’t the only thing they’re here for.”

Brendon furrowed his brow and opened his mouth to demand an elaboration on Sarah’s rather bitter-sounding and incredibly vague comment, but was unfortunately interrupted by a sudden, loud squeal and familiar patter of bare feet against cobblestones, which Sarah appeared more than happy to stop the wagon for. Just as she had the week before, Bandit launched herself up into Sarah’s arms just recklessly enough to send a quick jolt of panic up Brendon’s spine during the split second she was in the air. “Sarah!” she exclaimed, her face lighting up as if merely seeing Sarah had made her day immeasurably better. 

A warm, genuine smile spread across Sarah’s face, but Bandit hardly noticed it, if at all, as she’d already moved on to peering curiously up at Brendon. “You brought your friend again,” she said, though it didn’t sound like a question or a judgement. Simply a statement of fact.

Brendon didn’t have much experience with children, as the only ones he’d ever regularly interacted with were Ryan and Z, during which time Brendon, of course, had been a child himself. The servants typically began their work around the age of ten, meaning that, in Brendon’s estimation, they had a good few years on Bandit. He did remember one of the older servants having a child of her own- a little girl, if he remembered correctly, with a name that he was pretty sure started with an ‘A’- back when Brendon was around nine or so, whom Brendon had been curious enough to visit a handful of times before Ryan had deemed the her “boring” and “not worth his- or, by extension, Brendon’s- time”, and the child had soon slipped from Brendon’s awareness altogether. He supposed she was still living in the castle somewhere, probably staying in the servants quarters or being given simple tasks like sweeping and dusting until she grew old enough to be trusted with more laborious ones. Regardless, she’d been only a baby when Brendon had known her, and therefore was unable to comprehend, much less respond to, anything he happened to say to her, so communicating with her would’ve been vastly different than with Bandit, anyway.

Despite his lack of experience with Bandit’s age group, though, Brendon nevertheless leaned down to reach eye-level with her (having to practically touch his knees to his chest to do so) after Sarah placed her gently down in the back of the wagon. “Yes,” he said, in a voice slightly higher pitched and more fluid than his usual one. He also found himself talking a little slower than he normally did, though he hadn’t consciously planned to, and using a new sort of intonation in which the different sounds in a word slid seamlessly into one another, like the auditory equivalent of a color gradient. “She did bring me. My name is-” Brendon caught himself mere moments before introducing himself with his real name, remembering that he was currently operating under his father’s name. Before he said that, though, Sarah’s comment from the previous Thursday, when she’d accused him of being “a bit of a hotshot”, echoed in his mind, and he realized that, in that statement, she’d referred to him as Brendon in front of Steve.

Thoroughly confused as to how he should introduce himself, Brendon resorted to glancing pleadingly at Sarah, who pressed her lips together in order to suppress an amused smile before finally picking up where Brendon’s sentence had left off. “Brendon,” she said firmly, causing Brendon to furrow his brow and make a mental note to inquire as to why Sarah had wanted him to use a fake name in the first place if its use would be inconsistent. “This is Brendon.”

Bandit narrowed her eyes and cocked her head, and Brendon felt his heart rate quicken, thinking that she might be suspicious of how he had appeared not to know his own name. Luckily, the pensive look passed quickly, and no more than a few seconds later, Bandit was looking up at Brendon with her grin wider than ever. “Your name starts with the same sound as mine! ‘Buh.’”

For a moment, Brendon wondered why she was speaking of the sound made by the letter B instead of simply naming the letter itself, before coming to the rather startling realization that she, along with the rest of the townspeople, was probably illiterate. “‘Buh,’” he repeated, “yeah. There’s a letter that makes that sound. It’s called a B.”

“Letter?” Bandit’s eyes widened almost comically once she realized what Brendon’s statement implied. “You can  _ read _ ?” The sheer magnitude of her awe was jarring to Brendon; it was as if, in her mind, reading was a skill akin to flying. He supposed it was, in a way- after all, if there was truly no one in her life that could read or write, how could she know that was possible at all?

In his peripheral vision, Brendon noticed that Sarah, too, looked surprised, despite knowing much more about his background than Bandit did, which reminded Brendon that it was, in fact, unusual even for a castle servant to be literate. Indeed, Brendon had only ever been taught to read because Ryan had insisted, stating that, if he was forced to sit through hours of dull copying and recitation of age-old historical texts, it was only fair that Brendon had to as well. Even then, the tutor had focused much more on Ryan’s education than Brendon’s, so much so that Brendon probably could’ve gotten away with zoning out and retaining absolutely nothing from the countless lessons he’d been allowed to sit in on had Ryan (probably out of sheer boredom) not made a sort of competition out of it, seeing who could get through texts faster while still understanding their contents (which always ended up being a tie, as Brendon could never get himself to focus on the words long enough to understand what they meant before moving on to the next line, and Ryan would always try to cheat and skip to the last sentence after reading the first three), or who could memorize the spellings and definitions of more long, virtually useless words (Ryan, but only because Brendon wasn’t nearly pretentious enough to care about such things). 

Brendon felt the beginnings of a smile play at the corners of his lips as he recalled Ryan climbing triumphantly onto the table, much to the tutor’s chagrin, with one wiry arm stretching high above his head, clutching the piece of parchment on which he had correctly spelled the word “smaragdine,” looking much too triumphant and self-satisfied for someone who had just proven that they had legitimately taken time out of their day to memorize a completely unnecessary synonym of the much simpler, more commonly known word “green.” Even then, Ryan had been annoyingly complacent, though he hadn’t yet developed the compulsion to respond to every situation with persistent, invariable apathy. Back then, Ryan had worn his smugness the same way the guards wore the Ross coat of arms in their helmets- proudly, and out in the open for everyone to see- before he’d learned to hold it high above everyone’s heads, just far removed enough for him to be able to deny its existence whenever someone pointed it out.

Brendon drew himself out of his thoughts to find that Bandit was still looking at him with bright, curious eyes, and remembered her excited question. “Yep, and I can write, too,” he answered, “Maybe I can show you how to write your name sometime, hm? Oh, and I bet I can smuggle in a few cookies.” Bandit’s eyes lit up at the mention of cookies, and she gazed up at Brendon as if he had just invented the process of sugar cultivation. Meeting her wide eyes, Brendon felt a sort of warmth in his stomach, one that he couldn’t remember ever experiencing before. It was somewhat akin to the feeling he used to get when Ryan would tap impatiently on his cottage window in the middle of the night, back when they were younger and had a hobby of sneaking around in and exploring the many lesser-used corridors of the castle, but more peaceful; less open fire with sparks jumping and more warm oven with the smell of roast turkey wafting from it.

The moment was unfortunately cut short when Sarah, cleared her throat, drawing the attention of both Brendon and Bandit. “Well,” she said, “I don’t think we should be making any promises.” She looked at Brendon pointedly as she spoke, as if he’d said something to Bandit that he shouldn’t have. At first, he thought it was about the writing- after all, he knew it was practically unheard of for members of the lower class to know how to read or write, so perhaps there was some sort of societal ban on it that he didn’t know about- and that Ryan had chosen to ignore when he insisted Brendon sit in on his tutoring sessions.

No more than a second after that thought crossed his mind, though, Brendon realized the real, much simpler reason behind Sarah’s sharp remark: she didn’t think he would actually come through with the offers he’d made, and therefore thought it to be cruel of him to get Bandit’s hopes up. Brendon opened his mouth to set straight that he did, in fact, intend on staying true to his words, and in fact, the cooks would likely soon begin the process of perfecting their dessert recipes in the weeks leading up to Z’s ball, so it was almost a given that he’d be able to get his hands on at least a few cookies. Before he could get a single word out, though, Bandit piped up with an exclamation of, “Oh yeah, Sarah, guess what!” Judging from the unadulterated excitement and brightness in her tone, Sarah’s words, along with the warning tone in which they had been spoken, had gone entirely over her head, and had served as nothing to her but a reminder of whatever it was she had to say.

The look of disapproval on Sarah’s face slipped away faster than Ryan did whenever his father wanted to see him in the throne room. She turned her attention to Bandit with a warm smile on her face, reciprocating her excitement masterfully. “What?”

Bandit beamed and placed her tiny hands proudly on her hips. “Mommy and Daddy said I can guard the bread while it rises when they go to your house today!”

Sarah’s eager smile faltered for a moment as she furrowed her brow in confusion. “They’re…” She trailed off as she recovered from her surprise, and by the time she spoke again, her voice and expression had returned to their earlier enthusiasm. “Well, that sounds like fun! You know, maybe you should go practice it right now, hm? I bet your mom and dad would feel good knowing they’re leaving their bread in the hands of a professional.”

Bandit pursed her lips for a few moments, considering this idea, before breaking into an even wider grin than before. “Good idea! I’m gonna be the best bread guarder they’ve ever seen!” she exclaimed before hopping out of the black of the wagon and bounding off towards the bakery.

Sarah maintained that impressively enthusiastic smile as if it had been painted onto her face as she watched Bandit disappear into the building, and only once she was safely out of view did Sarah let her smile drop. Brendon assumed her expression would re-form into one of perplexedness, as she had clearly been taken aback by the news that Lindsey and her husband were planning to visit. However, when he caught a glimpse of her face as she leaned forward to urge Bogart towards the correct street, he found that the emotion portrayed on it was much closer to troubledness than confusion, as if she knew exactly why the Ways wished to see her, but hoped that her intuition would be proven false. 

They sat in silence for well over a minute, which of course felt like an eternity when Brendon had absolutely nothing to distract himself with. It didn’t help that he  _ did _ have a question for Sarah, but was unsure as to when or how to ask it, and was honestly a little afraid to interrupt her train of thought, as he had a feeling that would entail metaphorically throwing himself in front of it. Eventually, though, his lip began to hurt from being chewed, and the awkward silence became quite simply too much for him to bear. “Why’d you call me Brendon?   
he blurted out.

Sarah blinked and turned to Brendon with a slight crease in her brow, as if she’d forgotten he was there. “Huh?”

“You told Bandit my real name. Brendon, instead of Boyd. You did it with Steve last week, too.”

Sarah still looked as if she was taken off guard, but soon swallowed enough of her surprise to be able to respond. “Oh, yeah, I…” she trailed off momentarily, which Brendon initially found suspicious, as if she were trying to come up with a sufficient lie, but soon his common sense kicked in and told him that she was probably just still recovering from being suddenly drawn out of whatever thoughts she had been burying herself in. “Remember how wary of you Steve was? People are like that here, and they’ll never trust you if they find out you’re lying to them. Plus, it’s not like any of us would go running to the king to tell him about you being here, even if we had the chance to.”

That explanation seemed reasonable enough, but Brendon couldn’t shake the feeling that parts of it didn’t fit. “But… couldn’t someone potentially mention me to the guards accidentally, not knowing it would get me into trouble?”

Sarah huffed a laugh, and it sounded so natural that Brendon suddenly felt foolish for suspecting, even momentarily, that she might be lying to him. “It’s pretty obvious you’re a castle boy **.** Your clothes, the way you talk, the fact that you can  _ write _ , for heaven’s sake. You even  _ smell _ like privilege.”

Brendon furrowed his brow, and as soon as Sarah turned away from him to face the road, he brought one of his arms up to his nose and breathed in deeply. As far as he could tell, he didn’t really smell like much of anything (though, admittedly, he figured that people probably couldn’t often pick up their own scents, as they were constantly surrounded by them). He didn’t think his clothes were all that out of place, either; neutral-colored tunics and trousers were practically a uniform for the working class. Next to Ryan and Z, with a small fortune’s worth of gemstones and gold thread woven through their lavish garments, he looked strikingly plain, and blended in much better with the servants. Because of this, he’d assumed it was the same in Timemus, but, looking Sarah’s dress, he did notice that the fabric of it appeared much thinner and more faded than that of his own clothing, as well as being patched up in at least ten places, while Brendon always found a replacement pair of trousers waiting outside his cottage whenever there was so much as a tear in the knee of his current ones. “But Shane can’t tell?” he questioned. If his castle residency were really so conspicuous, surely a man who had presumably spent time there himself would notice it immediately.

Sarah snorted a laugh. “I doubt Shane can tell one end of his sword from the other until he cuts himself on the blade.”

Brendon huffed in amused agreement; in the few interactions they’d shared, Shane had already quite eloquently proven himself to be one of the least perceptive people Brendon had ever come across (him not immediately seeing through Brendon’s terrible acting skills when he and Sarah were carrying out their ruse was proof enough of that). 

Given that fact, Brendon had to admit that it was a bit of a reach to take Shane’s observations (or, rather, lack thereof) as proof of his ability to blend in with everyone else outside the castle walls. It was very possible that Sarah was not, in fact, exaggerating in her description of his noticeability.

Before he had time to figure out what to do with this newfound information, though, Brendon was drawn out of his thoughts as he felt the wagon slow to a stop in front of the mill. Almost immediately, Sarah hopped off and patted Bogart’s neck in preparation to lead him to his post behind the mill. “Well, we’re here,” she said, glancing expectantly up at Brendon, who had yet to move from his seat on the wagon. “You came, you saw, you did absolutely nothing. Happy?”

Brendon chewed the inside of his lip, debating whether or not he should give voice to the question that felt just about ready to leap off the tip of his tongue if he so much as opened his mouth. “Can… can I come in?” he asked finally. He’d decided on this as his main goal shortly after he’d cemented the idea of returning to Timemus in his mind- after all, he figured that there was no better way to learn the truth of someone’s lifestyle than to view their living quarters- but once he was faced with the prospect of actually doing it, he realized how invasive the idea may have seemed. 

Sarah blinked in surprise, clearly still bewildered by the amount of interest Brendon was taking in her life. “I…” she began. By her next blink, though, she had regained her rational composure, and began to shake her head. “You really shouldn’t. You shouldn’t even be here at all.”

“Please?” Brendon blurted out before he could stop himself, “I mean… the damage is already done, isn’t it? Of course, that implies that my presence her is damaging, which it isn’t, so I…” Brendon trailed off, realizing he was rambling. Clearing his throat, he climbed down from the wagon so he could face Sarah eye-to-eye. “I just want to know exactly what the royals- my  _ friends _ \- have done.” As cliche as it was, Brendon could hear his own heartbeat thumping in his ears as he forced himself to hold Sarah’s gaze, choosing to meet her metaphorical walls as a simple beggar requesting a few provisions, rather than an opposing army seeking to invade the stronghold of her privacy. 

Sarah’s eyes seemed to search Brendon’s “Well,” she said finally, her words sounding careful and just on the brink of reluctance, “I can’t exactly stop you, can I?”

Brendon’s eyes widened, and threw his open palms in the air as if to prove his innocence. “Oh, no, I’d never barge into your house if you didn’t give me permission. I’m not-”

Sarah let out a sharp, amused exhale, just short of being a laugh. “I’m teasing. Just try not to terrify any of my family members again, will you?” With that, she turned and started off towards the mill, with Brendon following close behind.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but the scene that became visible once Sarah pushed open the weathered-looking front door was most certainly not it. He supposed he’d pictured the interior of the mill as being plain and sparsely furnished, similarly to his own cottage, though perhaps a bit roomier, as it clearly had a much higher ceiling. Whatever he had envisioned, though, it was certainly not the reality that greeted him.

He was arguably correct in assuming it to be sparsely furnished, as there didn’t appear to be any furniture in sight, or even any common household items, such as pots or blankets. Despite this, though, the room was far from empty; one might even go as far as to say it was the complete opposite. Indeed, in place of what otherwise would’ve been an expanse of vacant floor space, there was what appeared, at least to Brendon, to be a jumbled mess of wheels, ropes, and pulleys that climbed all the way to the ceiling, giving the room a distinctly crowded feeling.

Brendon gazed up at the machinery in amazement, never having realized just how much equipment was used in the process of milling wheat into flour. He vaguely remembered flipping through a book of machine and chariot diagrams during one of those long hours in the castle library with Ryan and his tutor, but couldn’t recall any of the specifics, or even if it included milling machinery at all. For all intents and purposes, this was a whole new world to him. 

Curiously, however, as he peered around, Brendon noticed that he still couldn’t see any furniture, or evidence that people lived in this space at all, for that matter. On the side of the room with less machinery, he did notice a pile of empty sacks against the wall, as well as a few full-looking ones beside it. Perhaps Sarah and her family slept under those? Brendon’s skin began to itch merely at the thought. He turned to Sarah with his brow knitted in confusion. “Is this where you…”

Sarah shook her head and gestured to a rickety-looking wooden ladder on the other end of the room, which Brendon hadn’t even noticed amongst all the other, much less recognizable wooden structures taking up well over half of the room. “Up there’s the actual living quarters. This is all just machinery and storage.”

Brendon nodded his comprehension and briefly considered asking if he could climb the ladder, but decided not to push it. Just as he returned his focus to the rather intimidating amount of machinery present in the room, however, there was a loud thud, followed by a loud bout of frustrated swearing.

Directly following that noise, a muffled holler sounded from outside. “ _ Language, _ Steve!” The voice, which Brendon assumed belonged to Sarah and Steve’s father due to it’s deep and distinctly masculine pitch, seemed to come from the opposite side of the mill, over near where the water wheel would be. Indeed, he noticed that this was where a lot of the machinery seemed to start, which made sense, as the wheel was, of course, the source of power. 

Because he was buried deep within the jungle of milling equipment, which Brendon was slowly beginning to realize may have in fact been all part of a single, enormous machine, Steve’s seemed to pop up out of nowhere, and it looked almost as if it were connected to the machinery instead of to his body. He had his head turned towards the wall behind which his father’s voice had emanated **,** and therefore away from Brendon and Sarah, but Brendon could tell from his voice that he was rolling his eyes. “Sorry, father,” he called.

Brendon looked over at Sarah to find her pursing her lips to hold in a laugh, and was suddenly reminded of the countless, nearly identical interactions he’d witnessed between Ryan, Z, and King George. Before he had time to dwell more on this interesting parallel, though, Steve began to rub his neck (the thudding noise he’d made must’ve been him falling off of something) and turned around, his eyes widening when they landed on Brendon. “You brought _him_ again?” he asked Sarah in a rather incredulous tone, reminiscent of the way someone would refer to a lame horse if someone tried to bring it to a race.

“He wanted to come,” Sarah said, somehow managing to sound both defensive and uncaring at the same time, “he’s surprisingly strong-willed.” She let her gaze join Steve’s in landing on Brendon and holding it there just long enough for him to begin to feel uncomfortable, before abruptly focusing her attention back on Steve and changing the subject.  “Anyway, is there a problem with the machinery again?” she asked, gesturing up in the direction from which Steve had fallen. It was a reasonable deduction, after all, that he had been up there in order to do maintenance on some part of the looming jungle of contraptions that still appeared almost to have swallowed his body whole.

Steve’s nodded grimly and ran a tired hand through his short hair. “Wheel’s stuck again. We’re thinking there’s some sort of hole somewhere where dead grass is getting in to jam it. Father’s working on it from out there, while I’m trying to see if I can turn it manually from in here and maybe dislodge whatever’s stuck in it.”

Sarah sighed with the same weariness that Steve was displaying, despite not having been the one working on the problem for most of the morning. “Makes sense; I’m pretty sure most of this machinery is older than our grandparents. It ought to be replaced.”

“There are a lot of things in this village that ought to be replaced,” Steve replied, “It’s not our fault that that can’t happen.” Brendon could’ve sworn he felt Steve shoot an accusatory glance in his direction while saying the second part, and found that he momentarily felt the urge to hang his head in shame, despite not having done anything to directly impact the monetary situation in Timemus, or, for that matter, seen any proof that it was the fault of any so-called “castle folk” at all. Still, every time anyone pointed out a problem the townspeople had due to their poverty, he couldn’t help but call to mind an image of the necklace King George had given Z for her last birthday, which had been laden down with more rare gems than Brendon could name, and all the metalwork done in pure silver, and wondered for the first time where exactly the king had gotten the funds to pay for its creation.

Sarah let out another sigh, which interrupted Brendon’s train of thought, but somewhat strengthened the idea behind it in his mind. “A girl can dream,” she said, and she sounding achingly tired, though not in a physical, needs-to-take a nap way. With that, she turned and lifted a coil of rope off of a peg attached to the back of the door. “Well, I should go tether Bogart to his post. Think you can find something for Brendon to do?”

Steve quirked an eyebrow and gestured grandly around the small space similar to the way an osentatious nobleman would introduce guests to his grand ballroom, though in this case the manner was clearly mocking. “If there’s anything we have an abundance of in this house, it’s chores.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” Sarah said, turning back to glance around the room for a moment with an unreadable expression for a moment before springing back into action and heading out of the mill, leaving Steve and Brendon alone with the machinery. 

Once the door swung shut behind her, Steve stepped out from within the maze of wooden and stone contraptions. “So,” he said, crossing his arms. He seemed strangely intimidating in that room, somehow more so than he had outside the mill during he and Brendon’s first encounter. He was significantly taller than Brendon (though that wasn’t exactly saying much), and, despite being clearly malnourished, appeared to be at least as muscular as him, if not more so. He scanned Brendon’s face expectantly, as if he expected some sort of reply, which Brendon thought was a little unfair, considering that “so” wasn’t exactly the most stimulating conversation opener.

Regardless, he cleared his throat. “Uh, nice to see you again,” he said, immediately regretting the formality of it, but not having been able to come up with anything better to say.

Steve continued to look Brendon up and down, as if to size him up.  “Do you know how to dress a millstone?” he asked suddenly. The way he said it made it sound like it was some sort of test or measure of whether or not Brendon truly deserved his respect.

Brendon briefly considered lying, as he had a feeling Steve would hold his lack of knowledge over his head if he answered the question with the truth, which was of course that he hadn’t the faintest idea what a millstone was, much less how to dress one, or even what such a task would entail. He had a feeling, though, that Steve would’ve been able to see right through any fabrication he attempted to formulate (after all, how would someone who spend the first sixteen years of his life safely confined within the castle walls ever acquire any knowledge pertaining to milling machinery?), or, if he didn’t, try to put him to work doing whatever it meant to “dress a millstone”, which could have a far more disastrous outcome than the simple embarrassment of being caught in a lie. Brendon shook his head slowly and rather sheepishly, feeling very much out of his element.

As expected, a small but incredibly self-important smirk played across Steve’s features. “Well,” he said, crossing his arms, “that’s good, because I’d never trust you to do that anyway. You know how to sweep floors?”

Feeling slightly offended by the rather demeaning question, Brendon raised his eyebrows. “Does anyone  _ not  _ know how to sweep floors?”

“Do your ‘royal friends’?” Steve countered. After receiving no reply, he let out a short huff, as if to say  _ I thought so _ and gestured towards the far corner of the room. “Well, broom’s over there. If you break anything, it’s your job to replace it.”

Brendon decided to ignore the implication that he was actually idiotic enough to accidentally damage something in the act of sweeping, and instead crossed to room to retrieve the broom. Even it looked weary, with its straw bristles frayed and clearly much thinner than they had once been. Brendon almost felt bad picking it up, as if it were a sentient creature in need of a rest. After the first sweep, he half expected it to let out a long, tired groan, like the sound he himself made when Ryan requested his presence before even the sky decided to awaken from its nightly slumber, but accompanied by the aching sense of despair that seemed to hang over every aspect of Timemus.

But the broom did not complain of its predicament, nor did it completely fall apart in Brendon’s hands, so he simply continued to sweep with it, careful not to swing it too harshly so as not to dislodge any of the bristles. Steve went back to working on the water wheel, occasionally letting out frustrated sighs and shouting dismayed reports that the machinery still wasn’t budging to his father through the wall. Manually turning the wheel seemed to entail trying to forcibly rotate a much smaller wheel, shaped somewhat like a wagon wheel with little wooden pegs like a crown ringing the outer outside edge, which was attached to a long shaft that was presumably part of the water wheel. Once it became clear that this smaller wheel was not going to budge, and in fact seemed dangerously close to snapping off of the contraption altogether, Steve resorted to trying to turn the shaft directly, which looked to be even more fruitless, considering there was nothing for him to hold onto. 

No more than a few minutes of this had passed before Sarah reentered the mill with what appeared to be article of clothing draped over her forearm. “Mum’s doing laundry,” she announced, though Brendon wasn’t sure whether the words were directed at him or Steve. “I told her you’re here,” she said, turning to Brendon, “hopefully she won’t nearly faint this time when she sees you.” Before Brendon could repeat his earlier apology for that decidedly negative first impression, though, Sarah had already turned to address Steve. “Oh, and she wants you to stop wearing holes in your tunics. As do I, since it means I’m stuck doing mending again,” she said, holding up the fabric (presumably Steve’s tunic) on her arm.

“I’m not doing it on  _ purpose!”  _ Steve countered, though he didn’t seem all that invested in the argument, as he was still trying to force the stubborn wheel to turn, despite the method clearly not working. Both Brendon and Sarah watched with a sliver of amusement as he let out a frustrated huff, his cheeks and forehead beginning to turn red with the strain. When he finally let go of the wooden rod, he winced and began to pick at a fresh splinter in his hand.

“That rod’s going to snap if you put any more pressure on it,” Sarah said, “you’re better off helping father find whatever’s stuck in it outside. I’ll bring my mending down here, to make sure  _ he _ ” -she motioned pointedly in Brendon’s direction- “doesn’t break anything.”

“I’m not going to-” Brendon began, deciding that, though he could tolerate one mild insult on his ability to effectively perform a simple task, he had to draw the line at a reiteration of that same insult. However, neither Sarah nor Steve seemed to pay any mind to this objection, and Brendon soon fell silent, unsure as to whether they’d heard him at all.

Steve cast a glance up at the wheel, and despite the fact that there was clearly a complex series of metaphorical wheels turning in his head, the literal one remained stubbornly stationary. He nodded slowly in acceptance of Sarah’s offer. “Thanks, Sar,” he sighed, shoving his hands defeatedly into his pockets.

“No problem,” Sarah replied, already making her way over to the ladder leading up to the second floor. At the same time, Steve headed outside, and, once he’d left, Brendon found himself alone with his thoughts, if only for a moment or two.

Thinking back to his original motive for making this second trip to Timemus, which was to find out more information about the town, he wondered if he had been successful at all in his endeavors. He certainly  _ had  _ learned a bit more about the situation of the town, such as how worryingly questionable the practices of the guards were. But every piece of knowledge seemed to lead to simply more questions. It was oddly reminiscent of the time he’d gotten lost in the castle as a child, when every door he went through and corner he turned seemed to lead to simply more corridors to choose from.

Sarah soon reappeared at the top of the ladder, ending Brendon’s brief period of pondering. However, though she did disrupt the solitude of the room, she did not interrupt the silence, and simply over to sit down in the corner with Steve’s torn pants still draped over her arm. Realizing that he’d stopped sweeping (though he wasn’t sure whether it had been during his thoughts or upon Sarah’s arrival), Brendon hurriedly went back to work, though he continued to watch out of the corner of his eye as Sarah laid the pants out in front of herself and began threading her needle.

“You remind me of Z like that, you know,” Brendon said after a moment, mostly in an attempt to fill the silence and hopefully get a conversation going, “With the sewing. Of course, she’d be doing needlework, but it’s all the same from a distance.”

“It’s not, actually.” The response was quick and biting, but Sarah’s tone sounded more genuinely corrective than offended at whatever faux-pas Brendon had just committed (that was another jarring aspect of his experiences in Timemus- people never reacted to things the way he expected them to).  “Needlework is a hobby. I’m not doing this mending for  _ fun _ .” As if to prove her point, Sarah stabbed her needle rather harshly down into the fabric, which she’d been situating a grayish patch, which had clearly been part of some other article of clothing at some point, on top of as she spoke.

“Oh, she doesn’t particularly like sewing, either.” Brendon felt his lips curve into a fond smile as he recalled Z at a much younger age, her dainty hands curled into frustrated fists as she proclaimed quite vehemently to anyone who bothered to listen (which was, in fact, quite a lot of people, as many of them were societally obligated to) that she would rather be strapped into a bridle and sent to live in the stables as a horse than forced to embroider another rose onto a useless swath of fabric. “When we were younger, her mother- the late Queen Danielle, I mean- would give her these rectangular lengths of cloth to practice on nearly every day, and instead of using them for their intended purpose, she stashed them all away until she had enough to tie into a sort of makeshift rope that we then used to tie Ryan to a tree. I didn’t even get in trouble for it, since I was technically obeying her orders.” Brendon’s nostalgic smile grew even wider as he recalled the image of seven-year-old Ryan thrashing around against that tree, his features contorting into a frustrated pout as a giggling Z pulled the rope tight around his thin body. “I think you’d like her,” Brendon remarked, and he truly did mean it; despite their drastic differences in terms of status and outward appearance, Sarah and Z had a strikingly similar way of carrying themselves, with an innate elegance that commanded respect.

Sarah paused in her needlework to look up at Brendon with an unconvinced expression. “Back then, maybe. But you say she actually does the needlework now?” Sarah wrinkled her nose, as if, in her mind, considering the the idea of befriending a girl who genuinely enjoyed sewing was akin to willfully smelling a rotting fish.

“Only because she’s expected to,” Brendon countered. “And if she wants to have any power as Queen, she has to act as a Princess is expected to. Otherwise, no one will respect her,  and she won’t be able to get anything done.” He paused momentarily, picking at a small sliver of wood that was beginning to peel off of the top of the broom handle as he tried to come up with a way to eloquently phrase the point he was trying to make. “Sometimes rulers have to sacrifice personal happiness for the well-being of their countries.”

Brendon remembered the first time he’d realized this. It had been a bright, sunny day sometime in his fourteenth or fifteenth year, and he’d been out in the garden watering a rosebush while Ryan perched boredly on a nearby rock.

They’d been having a conversation about nothing in particular, most likely peppered with mildly insulting verbal jabs at one another, as their conversations so often were. Brendon didn’t remember exactly how it had come up, but at some point they’d ended up on the topic of the line of succession, and how Ryan’s status would most likely never surpass its current place. _ “Do you ever wish you were older than Z?”  _ Brendon had asked at one point. He must’ve known the weight of the question, as he’d put down the watering can and turned to fully face Ryan before asking it.

_ Ryan looked taken aback by the question, but recovered quickly, just as he always did. “What, so I could succeed my father? Nah,” he shook his head firmly, “too much responsibility. And, as Spencer so loves to remind me, diplomacy has never been my forte.”  _

_ Brendon’s mouth curved into a fond half-smile at that. “True. You’d probably end up at war with half the continent before the attendees of your first diplomatic meeting even finished stepping out of their carriages.” _

_ “Oh come on, I'm not that bad,” Ryan said, rolling his eyes. _

_ Brendon snorted, refusing to let Ryan get away with his dismissive attitude, and sat down on the rock beside him. “Remember that time you asked the Saltarian Queen whether it was customary in her country to nearly drown oneself in perfume, or if she had just been rather spacey that morning and accidentally applied it a few extra times?” _

_ “I was nine!” Ryan argued in a tone that sort of miraculously combined exclamation and stubborn level-headedness into a single inflection, “And, in my defense, she  _ was  _ wearing quite a lot of perfume.” _

_ Brendon looked down at the rosebush, glad he had an excuse to turn away from Ryan, as he had a feeling that the effect of his teasing would be greatly lessened if the subject of it was aware of the fond smile that Brendon found himself unable to keep off of his face. “It’s a good thing she likes kids.” _

_ The conversation lapsed into a companionable silence, Ryan seeming to have disappeared down the tracks of his own train of thought, and Brendon returning his focus to the garden. He’d moved on from the roses and was heading over to the tall, white lilies growing beside the duck pond when Ryan spoke again, stopping him in his tracks. _

_ “There are also… traditions that I would have to uphold as king. Choices I'd have to make that would… undermine certain… personal preferences.”  _

The words had been chosen carefully, but the implication was clear. It wasn’t as if Brendon hadn’t known about those preferences- judging from the snatches of whispered conversations he heard from passing servants, it seemed as if everyone in the castle did, many even before one of the countless forgettable servant boys Ryan had exercised said “preferences” with had gone and notified King George about them.

According to the servants, there had been signs all along, what with how much time Ryan spent in the garden (Brendon didn’t understand this bit in the slightest. After all, Brendon’s father had loved the garden more than anyone else in the world, and, from what Brendon could tell, he had had the same preferences as any normal man), or how close he was with his manservant (this one Brendon could at least fathom the origins of, though the idea of Ryan and Spencer being involved in some sort of secret romance was hilariously far-fetched). And indeed, Ryan wasn’t exactly the most secretive in his dalliances; after a while, all it took was a suggestively raised eyebrow at a passing servant for Brendon, Spencer, and Z to know not to enter his room that night. 

But, despite the multitude of implications he seemed so intent on creating, Brendon couldn’t recall Ryan ever explicitly stating there was anything- save for his status and, arguably, obnoxious displays of arrogance- setting him apart from any other man. Indeed, Brenon had occasionally found himself wondering if Ryan knew that his preferences were unusual at all, or if he simply assumed that all men looked at other men in the same way he did. It seemed like a rather plausible notion, actually; Brendon himself remembered not understanding that Ryan was anything out of the ordinary romance-wise until Z had taken him aside and instructed him not to repeat any of the questionable things Ryan had begun to say about boys in front of the King (an effort which had eventually proved to be in vain, but it still served the purpose of teaching Brendon what was and was not societally acceptable).

_“Oh_ ,” _Brendon said rather dumbly,_ _“I guess I never really thought about it that way.”_

_ Ryan shrugged, and he seemed genuinely accepting of the unfair limitations his somewhat unusual “personal preferences” imposed upon him (it was admittedly unlikely that said restrictions would ever get the chance to affect him, as Z was in good health, and would hopefully continue to be for years to come, but, for whatever reason, it still rubbed Brendon the wrong way). Despite his typically argumentative nature, Ryan leaned back as if he hadn’t a care in the world, letting most of his weight rest in his wrists and hands, which were splayed out behind him on the rock. “Monarchical status is overrated,” he said, craning his neck to look up at the sky as his long curls shone in the sunlight, “See, as a prince, I get nearly all the benefits of ruling, but without having to shoulder any actual responsibility. What more could I want?” _

“You mean the well-being of their own power _. _ ” Sarah’s harsh voice drew Brendon back to the present, though he couldn’t recall what statement of his she was correcting.

“Huh?”

“They’re all motivated by power, not actually caring for their subjects. We’re all just toys to them. Game pieces they can manipulate in whatever ways they can benefit from.” Her tone sounded cynical and bitter, as if she were speaking from experience.

“You have a very pessimistic view of royalty,” Brendon said, more as a simple observation than any sort of judgment. After all, considering the conditions Sarah lived in, Brendon understood how she and the other villagers could’ve come to view the royal family as a sort of embodiment of all of their troubles- an opinion which was no doubt amplified by the fact that none of them had ever actually met any of the royals face to face. In fact, there had been a few moments that day in which Brendon himself had begun to doubt the righteousness of the crown; after all, he’d always felt a bit intimidated by the authoritarian nature of King George, and it didn't seem all that far-fetched that he might enjoy exercising the control he had over his home on the rest of his domain.

“I’d say it’s more of a  _ real _ istic-” Sarah began, but before she could finish whatever biting response she had in store, she was cut off by a loud knock on the front door, causing both her and Brendon to jump. After a moment of clear puzzlement, Sarah put down her mending and tiptoed cautiously forward to peer cautiously between the slats of the door (Brendon found himself wondering what that cautious measure had come from. He doubted it was a pleasant origin) before swinging it open to reveal Lindsey Way, standing beside a round-faced man, who Brendon assumed to be Gerard, wearing a stained white apron. Both Ways had their lips pressed into grim lines, and they didn’t even have to speak before Sarah beckoned them inside. “Brendon,” she said, twisting around to face him as she stepped aside to let Lindsey and Gerard pass, “why don’t you go see if my mother needs any help with the laundry?”

Brendon glanced back and forth between Sarah and the Ways, feeling an insatiable urge to figure out what was going on. It wasn’t like no one had ever not-so-subtly excluded him from a conversation before- it was to be expected, seeing as he was a commoner living alongside the royal family- but at least then he knew the reason for the secrecy, and trusted that it was necessary to protect not only himself but the entire kingdom; after all, if political strategy and military plans were freely shared with all of the King’s subject’s, it would be only a matter of time before they reached the waiting ears of the rebels, which would no doubt have catastrophic effects. In this case, however, he highly doubted that whatever Lindsey and Gerard had come to discuss was a matter of the entire Kingdom’s security, so, impudent and presumptuous it was, Brendon let his curiosity trump the small twinge of guilt in his stomach as he pressed his ear up against the rough wood of the door, hoping it wouldn’t give him a splinter. 

It was silent for a few moments, and Brendon pictured Sarah, Lindsey, and Gerard all standing in the center of the little cottage, staring awkwardly between one another. Then someone cleared their throat, and a male voice, which must’ve been Gerard’s, spoke up. “Well, we’ve come to-”

The statement was cut off by a different voice, this one belonging to Lindsey. “She knows why we’re here, Gee,” she said sharply, though she didn’t sound annoyed so much as simply tense. Her tone got a bit softer, though still unmistakably urgent, when she addressed Sarah. “You _do_ know, yes?”

There was a pause, and, were he not afraid that she would catch sight of his silhouette, Brendon would’ve leaned over to peer between the slats in the door in the hopes of glimpsing Sarah’s expression as she prepared a response to the question. When she finally did speak, Brendon had to strain to hear it, though she didn’t seem to be purposefully whispering- it was more as if her voice had gone suddenly hoarse, and had found that she genuinely couldn’t speak any louder. “You… are you sure?” she asked, and she sounded almost afraid, which Brendon found odd- after witnessing the unconcerned way in which she had dismissed the disturbing nature of Shane and the other guards’ attitudes, he would’ve believed that she wasn’t afraid of anything.

Lindsey’s response sounded mournful, but definitive. Whatever she was talking about doing was obviously neither easy nor ideal, but, in her (and presumably Gerard’s) opinion, was the best thing to do. “No one buys bread anymore; not when it’s so easy for them to bake their own. We barely made it through last winter.  _ Bandit _ barely made it. She got sick, remember?” She sighed heavily before continuing, as if the next part were particularly difficult for her to admit. “We’re not sure we have enough to even survive another collection day.”

Sarah sucked in a breath. Whatever Lindsey had said must’ve had some radically negative implications. “You know I can’t… in one week…” She trailed off, clearly at a loss for words.

There was a sound of someone taking a deep, sorrowful breath before Gerard’s voice picked up the conversation. “We know. We’re…” he, too, didn’t finish his sentence, though in his case it seemed to be less due to him not knowing what to say and more about him not wanting to say it.

After Gerard remained silent for a few seconds, Lindsey took on the duty of speaking the words he apparently couldn’t. “We’re not asking for three.”

Sarah didn’t reply at first, and, though Brendon couldn’t imagine her looking anything stunned, he had a feeling that was exactly the expression on her face at that moment. When her voice did finally reach his ears, it had gone quiet again, and was just on the verge of sounding choked up. “Are… are you sure?” she said weakly, and, for just about the millionth time, Brendon wished he understood what she was talking about, as it sounded very important.

In stark contrast to Sarah’s, Lindsey’s voice sounded even and strong, though something in her tone made it clear that a great deal of despair resided just behind that resolve. “We wouldn’t have come if we weren’t.”

When Sarah replied, voice was louder and sounded more composed, but still shaky, like a child trying to face their fear of the dark when they needed to get up to get relieve themselves in the middle of the night.“Well, you know how this works.” Brendon could’ve sworn he picked up a hint of humor in the words, as if there were some sort of past event involving her and the Ways that she was referencing. 

Regardless, if there indeed was a joke there, it didn’t garner any laughs, and, in fact, the next sound to reach Brendon’s ears was not a vocal one at all, but was instead the scraping of boots against the brick floor of the mill as someone turned towards the door. He hurried to flatten himself against the adjacent side of the building, nearly losing his footing and tumbling down the hill in the process, and no more than a second later he heard the door rattle slightly in its rusted hinges as it was swung open. Soon enough, the Ways came into view, starting off down the road towards the center of town, and Brendon hardly dared to breathe, knowing that, if either of them turned around, they’d catch sight of him immediately.

Only once the Ways had become little more than ever-shrinking silhouettes on the long street did Brendon let out an audible sigh of relief and peeled himself off of the side of the building. He questioned whether it was safe to go back inside, as he knew it would look suspicious if he came back right after the Ways left. As soon as he peered around the corner, though, he found that Sarah was not inside at all, and was instead sitting beside the door, hugging her knees to her chest as she looked pensively off into the distance.

After a moment of contemplation, he gingerly made his way over to her. She showed no signs of even noticing his presence as he lowered himself down onto the grass beside her, and simply continued to gaze off into the horizon. When finally spoke, she still didn’t turn to look at him, but unwrapped one of her arms from around her shins and pointed towards one of the two nearby dilapidated houses that Brendon had noticed on his first visit. “You see that house, Brendon?” Brendon wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to answer that question, so he just nodded, hoping Sarah would see it in her peripheral vision. “There used to be a family that lived there. The Campers. Their daughter, Meagan, was my closest childhood friend.” There was a faraway look in her eyes, and Brendon wondered what sort of memory she was reliving. He tried to imagine her as a child- the same way he remembered Ryan and Z, exuding bright, innocent optimism in every giggle and twirl-  but found that he couldn’t picture her as anything but the girl sitting beside him, with her heavy sighs and dirt-smudged elbows. Indeed, it was during that very thought process that Sarah dropped her gaze down to the grass, drawn out of her presumably happy memories by the depressing facts of her reality. “But now that’s a thing of the past, and in your reality they’ll never really exist at all, and you know why?” 

There was another rhetorical question, and Brendon felt strangely as if he  _ should’ve  _ known the answer, despite knowing he couldn’t possibly be expected to. Still, all he could do was remain silent, and Sarah continued soon enough, though Brendon could’ve sworn he heard a little bit of resentment seeping into her voice. “Because they’re  _ gone, _ Brendon. Gone, just like the the family of Meagan’s betrothed, the Wentzes, and Bandit’s Uncle Mikey, and the Weekes family, the Saportas, the Becketts… probably some more I was too young to remember. And you know what the worst part is?” This time, Brendon didn’t have to worry whether or not Sarah’s question was rhetorical, as she’d stopped pausing between sentences. She was unmistakably angry (though the anger didn’t seem to be pointed at anyone in particular), and her manner reflected that. She hurled sentences into the air like stones from a row of trebuchets- ferociously and in quick succession. “The worst part is not knowing who’s going to be next. Mr. Toro, the blacksmith? The Williamses and their cornfields?  _ Me _ ?” After that part, she did pause, gazing despairingly out at the sagging roof of what had apparently once been the home of her best friend. 

Brendon felt as if he ought to say something to break the silence and offer Sarah at least an attempt at consolation, but found that he couldn’t come up with anything adequate to say. Perhaps it was for the best, though, that he didn’t try to comfort her, because, as she finally turned her head to face him, Brendon found that he had severely misjudged the emotion on her face- while he’d thought she had been forlorn, her eyes were, in fact, narrowed in a display of icy rancor, which she then seemed to be focusing on Brendon. “You know who it won’t be, though?” she spat. Brendon could only stare back at her with eyes as wide and blank as those of a fish. “You.”

With that, she returned her gaze to the decrepit Camper house, pointedly ignoring Brendon opening his mouth to defend himself. After all, the origin of Sarah’s resentment was simply the fact that he was born into a better situation than she was, which he didn’t have any control over. Plus, he actually  _ did  _ know what it was like to fear forced displacement, as he’d been taught from a very young age to always, above all else, respect the royal family, as his livelihood, and perhaps even life itself, quite literally depended on their acceptance of him (Ryan had become a bit of an exception to this rule, but the principle still stood, and most certainly still applied to any encounters Brendon had with King George).

On the other hand, though, he knew that Sarah  _ did  _ undeniably have it worse than him. In Brendon’s case, though he had to carefully think through his actions before executing them, as long as he successfully remained on King George’s good side, he was guaranteed access to adequate shelter, the best medical care available, and more food than he knew what to do with. In comparison, Sarah’s family, along with the rest of the townspeople, very clearly had to work as hard as they possibly could, and still lived in evident poverty, as well as in fear of anyone and anything pertaining to the castle. 

Sarah stood up, making it clear that she was finished with the conversation. “You should probably be heading home. Back to your  _ castle _ .” Her voice sounded completely flat, as if she’d taken all of the emotions that should’ve been tied to it had disappeared along with all of those families she’d listed off.

Brendon stood up to face her, but found that he couldn’t meet her eyes, much less think of anything to say to comfort her. He wasn’t even sure she needed comforting, for that matter. He hung his head in a silent admission of defeat and turned away from the mill, feeling Sarah’s bitter gaze boring into his back. 

The walk back to the castle was a long one. 


	7. VI: As His Calloused Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaah I'm so sorry this chapter took a ridiculous amount of time. I'm not even gonna try to excuse it I just kept randomly losing all my motivation for writing oof

Perhaps Brendon spent too much time in the gardens, but sometimes he thought the people around him could resemble flowers. For example, Z, in that particular moment, was a calla lily, exuding an aura of elegance and calm regality as she lounged in a cushioned chair beside the window in her brother’s bedroom. She was using one smooth, fair-skinned arm turning the pages of the small book perched on her knees, while the other was laid across the windowsill in a manner that was somehow both lazy and delicate, similar to the graceful curving and swaying of lilies in the breeze on their long, graceful stems. Her dress seemed to agree with this comparison— despite the richness of its mauve color, the fabric appeared light and soft, as if it, too, would dance at the slightest breath of wind. She looked, in a word, serene; lilies were flowers to be admired, not disturbed.

Ryan, on the other hand, was a dandelion. He was lying in his bed with his arms draped lazily over his torso, his narrow figure forming a smooth, straight stem, uninterrupted by any leaves or other protuberances except at the top, where his long hair fanned out on the pillow like a burst of curling petals. There was a sort of allure to him, too, one that he didn’t share with Z— while the beauty of lilies was calm and patient as it waited to be noticed, dandelions, with their cheerful yellow color bright against the grassy expanses surrounding them, demanded attention, uncaring of how abundance may cheapen it.

That rather artful image was soon ruined, however, when Ryan pushed himself into a sitting position, snapping his dandelion stem neatly in half, arched his back, and let out a loud yawn, clearly more for the purpose of being obnoxious than expressing actual fatigue. “I’m bored,” he announced in a tone that clearly conveyed an unspoken order for everyone listening to do something about that boredom. When no one replied, he leaned back on the palms of his hands and performed the signature Ryan tactic of elaborating on his initial complaint until someone finally grew exasperated enough to acknowledge it. “We’ve been sitting here for _at least_ an hour. And my servant boy of choice is stuck mucking out the stables today, so-”

Surprisingly, it was Z who took Ryan’s bait and interrupted him first, though she continued to read her book as she did so, and therefore managed to keep from lending him even half of the attention he’d been hoping for. “Oh, do continue whining about the state of your sexual exploits, dear brother,” she drawled, “It truly captivates all of our attention.”

Ryan opened his mouth to retort, but soon closed it again, realizing that it was Z he was talking to, and she was one of the least satisfying people in existence to argue with, because not only were her chances of winning extremely high, she also never seemed to truly invest herself in petty quarrels, making any opponent feel rather childish and, especially in Ryan’s case, still lack the attention they so clearly desired. It was a rather ingenious method— Brendon, as a frequent arguer with Ryan, felt qualified to make that judgement— though it took a certain level of restraint that he himself most certainly did not possess.

Knowing all of this, Ryan resorted to simply lobbing a pillow at his sister’s head— an attack which she easily dodged, leaving the pillow to sail freely away for Spencer, who was busy polishing a large porcelain vase on Ryan’s dresser, to run after and frantically catch before it collided with something expensive.

Once Spencer managed to successfully secure the pillow and irritatedly toss it back towards the bed, Ryan leaned back on his hands again, seemingly unphased by the defeat he had suffered only moments before. “I wonder if that new kitchen boy is anything to my liking. Do you know?”

The last, part, for reasons unknown, was directed at Brendon, who was not by any means prepared to answer that sort of question. He didn’t even know there _was_ a new kitchen boy. Plus, he had no reason to have kept track of what Ryan’s specific preferences entailed when it came to that sort of thing, obviously. “I, uh…” he stuttered, having no idea how to answer that question, or even whether or not he was actually supposed to. “There’s a new kitchen boy?” he asked, both as a diversion from the question at hand, as well as truly out of curiosity; he couldn’t recall any instances in which problems had arisen with the existing amount of kitchen staff, so it seemed odd that another member had been deemed necessary.

Ryan let out a sort of amused huff at the subject change, but went along with it. “Yes, hired last week. Father doesn’t dare risk skimping on the preparations for Z’s ever-important ball.” There was a sort of underlying bitterness in his tone as he spoke that set off an alarm bell in Brendon’s head; perhaps he should’ve kept his mouth shut after all.

But no, he decided barely a moment later, Ryan was always finding things to get pissy about, and a little bit of sharpness in his voice was about as out-of-the-ordinary as grass on the hills surrounding the castle. It was a wonder Brendon had even noticed it.

“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, brother,” Z interjected, and Brendon wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or increasingly on edge that she alleviated the expectation for him to reply. “Green has never been your color.” Although her words seemed to come more from a place of amusement than legitimate offense, there was a bit of sharpness to her tone; a warning, of sorts.

Ryan rolled his eyes, plowing right past said warning as if he hadn’t noticed it at all (it was unclear whether or not he actually hadn’t, or was simply pretending not to for the sake of being annoying). “Oh yes, I’m _jealous_ of your impending loss of free will.”

“Marriage is an important event in the life of anyone, especially a member of the upper class.” Even Brendon had to admit that the words sounded a bit too rehearsed, as if they had been simply memorized instead of conjured out of genuine belief in their sentiment.

“Astounding.” By this point, the edge gained by Ryan’s words was undeniable— and not simply the false, harmless one hewn of pure smoke and mirrors that they always possessed. “Father’s words are even less convincing on _your_ tongue.”

It was at that point that Brendon realized three things. One, that this back and forth, if not interrupted, was going to go on for quite a while. Two, that, not only did the argument seem to be ramping up into something rather arduous and lengthy, it was also growing surprisingly heated, adding an uncomfortable tension to the room that made it more than a little unpleasant to be a casual bystander. And three, that the questions threatening to leap off of the tip of Brendon’s tongue were getting more and more insistent by the minute, and they weren’t going to wait until whenever Z finally managed to shut Ryan down.

“Ryan,” Brendon interrupted, trying to keep his tone light and only mildly curious so as to hide the immense weight behind the question he was about to ask, “where do you think your father gets the money for hiring extra staff?” His heart seemed to skip a few beats as the words tumbled from his mouth; it was risky to ask too many odd questions, especially ones that could be construed as questionings of the legitimacy of King George’s rule. But after seeing the stark contrast in quality of life inside and outside of the castle walls, he couldn’t help but wonder just how much the monarchy had to do with that, and, perhaps even more worryingly, whether or not they were aware of the damages caused by their lavish lifestyle.

Ryan blinked and, though he appeared annoyed at the interruption, eagerly jumped on the opportunity to paint Brendon as a fool. “The treasury, of course. You’ve lived here for thirteen years, Brendon, I’d expect you to know that.”

“No, I know _that,”_ Brendon replied, deflecting the accusation of idiocy and sending it right back to Ryan. This was such a practiced maneuver for both of them, it barely even felt hostile— simply routine. “But where… where do you think the money in there comes from?”

This question truly did take some thought, though only for a moment. “Exports, I suppose,” Ryan said, after a brief furrow of his brow, “and military defeats, though the Rebels aren’t exactly the most lucrative opponents.”

Brendon nodded absentmindedly as he wracked his brain for a way to bring up the wealth (or lack thereof) of the townspeople without diverting too much from the natural flow of conversation.  “Oh, and taxes, of course.”

“Taxes! Yeah-” Brendon internally breathed an immense sigh of relief “-I’ll bet a lot of money comes from those, right?”

Ryan shrugged. “Well, we do have a lot of subjects.”

“Do you think they like paying those taxes?” This one came out fast and fervent— there was no turning back by that point; better to just plow through.

Ryan let out a snort at that, as if it were a ridiculous question. “Well, they probably don’t _like_ them all that much, in the same way Spencer doesn’t particularly like fluffing my pillows. But it’s a duty they must perform, to ensure their own protection and stability under the crown.”

“So you think of the taxes as fees for safety? And if someone doesn’t pay them, they should lose rights to their life?” It was a dangerous statement; Brendon regretted it as soon as his own words reached his ears, and the amount of tension in the room seemed to double almost instantly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Spencer’s shoulders tense, and even Z had torn her attention away from her book to watch intently for her brother’s response.

Ryan paused, and Brendon found himself biting down hard on his tongue. “I suppose, yes,” Ryan conceded. His words were slow and thoughtful, and for just a moment Brendon could fathom the idea of Ryan admitting his own error in judgement. But that tiny, practically unfathomable hope was soon shattered when he let out a short breath and continued the statement, his returned to their usual self-satisfied cadence. “But you phrase it like a cruelty; it’s a mere necessity. If there were no taxes, there would be no funding for the army, and therefore no means by which to protect the kingdom.”

Brendon took a moment to process this. “Ryan,” he said carefully,  “Do you think the townspeople are poor?”

Again, there was a pause, this one even longer than the last. Brendon got the strange impression that, had he tried to move in that moment, he would’ve found himself incapable of doing so purely because of the incredible volume and density of tension present in the room at that moment.

When Ryan finally articulated his answer, it was confident; arguably too much so, too relaxed for such a serious question, to the point of being disturbing, like someone laughing as they held a knife a hair’s width away from another person’s throat. “Well, the whole kingdom is suffering a bit economically, thanks to the rebels. Constantly supplying the military is quite exhausting on our funds.” He leaned back on his hands, and arched his back in a lazy stretch, as if he hadn’t a care in the world; and indeed, as Brendon was beginning to realize, perhaps he didn’t. “Why?”

Almost subconsciously, Brendon let his gaze drop to the large, heavy-looking gemstone set into the intricate gold brooch pinned to Ryan’s lapel. “Nothing,” he said, though his tone clearly contradicted the nonchalance of the word.

Having more than a few minutes of life experience, Ryan didn’t buy that. “What’s this about, Brendon? You’re so… sharp today.” He didn’t sound quite suspicious, but not all that far from it— in fact, Brendon couldn’t quite place the emotion driving Ryan’s words, and unfortunately was not in a situation in which he could pause to figure it out.

“Sharp?” he repeated the observation as if it were completely unfounded— Ryan wasn’t the only one who had mastered that trick. “Aren’t I always _sharp_ with you? I’ve found it’s often necessary to cut through such a thick, sluggish mind.”

Ryan retorted immediately, his eyes narrowing, and it was as if some profound shift occurred in the very air surrounding him and Brendon with the rapid return to easy, lighthearted argument. “I could have you jailed for that.”

Brendon simply smiled, knowing that Ryan resorting to empty threats meant that not only was he backed into a corner, but he was also explicitly aware of that fact (not that he would ever admit it). “So you’ve said.”

Ryan opened his mouth to counter Brendon’s snarky dismissal, but Z spoke up before he could. “Oh, how I love watching my brother and closest friend elegantly blossom into maturity,” she said wryly, before shutting her book with a loud clap. “However, I have a dress fitting to prepare for. Spencer, I trust you can handle the duty of childcare?”

Ryan blinked; it appeared that, similarly to Brendon, he’d momentarily forgotten about his sister’s presence, and it took him a moment to process her words. “We’re don’t need-” he began, but the door was already swinging shut behind her.

Brendon turned his gaze to the window, noticing how the sky had significantly brightened since when he’s first entered the room after breakfast. “Actually, I have some work to do in the gardens,” he said, pushing himself to his feet, “The gardenias should be sprouting in the next few days.”

Ryan’s eyes narrowed momentarily, and, for a split second, Brendon could’ve sworn he looked somehow hurt. But that was ridiculous; Ryan could perform his favorite hobby of listening to himself talk just as easily without Brendon in the room. “Spencer, go with him. This room is so… drab. I want that vase on my dresser filled with roses.”

Brendon gazed around the bedroom, his eyes catching on the myriad of gold accents and appliques that decorated the furniture, bedding, and drapes as they glinted in the mid-morning sunlight. “Yes,” he echoed in a dull voice as he pushed open the door, “drab.”

Once in the hallway, Brendon stuck his hands in the pockets of his trousers and immersed himself in the task of matching his breathing to the rhythm of Spencer’s footfalls as he toyed with the question that was slowly forming on the tip of his tongue. He managed to stay silent for a good thirty seconds or so, but just as he and Spencer turned out of the private wing of the castle, the words slipped out. “Do… do you think Ryan is a good person?”

He regretted the question almost as soon as he asked it, knowing what it implied, and how dangerously bordering on treason those implications were. And indeed, Spencer arched an eyebrow, clearly jumping to the conclusion Brendon had worried that he would. “Do you think he isn’t?”

“I never said _that_ ,” Brendon said quickly, “He’s just… I mean, he’s sort of rude most of the time, and a little bit…” he trailed off momentarily as he racked his brains for an acceptable descriptor,  “insensitive.” When Spencer’s expression remained one of surprise, Brendon backpedaled even further. “I just want to know your opinion. Since you know him so well.”

Spencer pressed his lips together and fixed his eyes on a seemingly random part of the wall as he crafted his response. “I think he’s young. And with that comes with a certain naivety and arrogance.” His words were careful; clearly, Brendon was not the only one worried about speaking too ill of the royal family. “He’s young, and he’s angry, and he doesn’t know what to do about it, so he acts out.”

Brendon furrowed his brow. “You’re only a year older than him. And I’m a few months _younger_.”

“Physically, yes,” Spencer agreed, “but I grew up when I was barely eleven years old and came to work at this castle. You grew up the first time you were invited to breakfast with the royal family after your father was taken, and realized that it was up to you to earn the right to keep that place at their table. Z grew up the first time she realized she was going to inherit an entire kingdom one day, and what exactly ruling entailed. But Ryan…” He lifted his shoulders in a sort of half-shrug. “Ryan hasn’t had to grow up yet. And I’m not sure he ever will.”

“So you think he’ll stay this… arrogant forever?”

Spencer shrugged again, though it was an abnormal occurrence of the gesture, as Brendon could tell that Spencer had quite strong opinions on the subject, so he was certainly not using it to express a lack of interest. “It’s possible. But perhaps no one really enjoying your company is a small price to pay if it means you never have to worry about the real world.”

Brendon paused the conversation to ponder this, finding that he couldn’t come up with a response to that proposition, or even be sure that such a thing was necessary. Eventually, his thoughts returned to an earlier statement that Spencer had made, which he was confused about the origins of. “You think he’s angry?”

Spencer seemed amused by the question. “You of all people should know how argumentative he is.”

“Yes, but… what does he have to be angry about?”

Spencer let out a short laugh. “Well, according to him, a lot of things. Wrinkled sheets, split ends, frayed clothing, the different foods on his plate accidentally touching one another-”

Brendon rolled his eyes. “I mean  _legitimately_ angry,” he clarified, cutting off what would’ve no doubt been an extensive list of petty grievances Ryan had had over the years. “Enough to drive certain pieces of his personality.”

“Well, wouldn’t you be? If you were allowed to have everything except the one thing you actually wanted?”

If anything, this explanation only confused Brendon further. “And what would that be?”

Spencer gave him a long look, his expression somehow making Brendon feel as if he were missing some monumentally obvious piece of information. “Self-expression,” Spencer said finally as he returned his gaze to the wall, “he wants… the right to express his personality.”

Somehow, that answer only increased Bredon’s confusion, but Spencer didn’t elaborate, and they walked the rest of the way to the garden in silence.

**< <>>**

For as long as he could remember, Brendon had always found a sort of rhythm in gardening that he could easily get lost in. It wasn’t that he _forgot_ the world beyond damp earth and thick foliage existed, he simply got to a point where that realm of existence no longer concerned him. After successfully falling into that rhythm, Brendon could spend hours thinking about absolutely nothing outside of flowers, his hands, and the earth he continuously plunged them into.

That particular day, however, Brendon found himself unable to fall into that comfortable, trance-like state. Instead, his mind raced, so much so that he often found his hands slowing to a stop midway through tending to a flowerbed, and spending several minutes simply hovering uselessly over whatever foliage they were supposed to be caring for. It was Ryan he was imagining— Ryan, lying amongst the small mountain of pillows on his bed, all pale, delicate skin that had clearly never been darkened in the sun and strikingly dark hair that had never been bleached by it. He saw this Ryan sitting up in bed and gazing around his room, at furniture worth more than the Orzechowskis’ entire mill, at exquisite tapestries with no doubt years worth of work poured into them, and calling them drab, demanding _more._

Perhaps that was exactly what Spencer had meant, in his enigmatic statement about Ryan wanting something he couldn’t have. Perhaps Ryan, at his core, could never be satisfied, because no matter how much he had, he’d always want more, like a child taking demanding more and more cookies until their stomach hurt, except Ryan would then use that stomach ache as an excuse to buy fifteen new pillows to try and get comfortable. Were he not so deep in thought, Brendon would’ve noticed his hands speeding up at this, beginning to tear more harshly than usual at the little green weeds he was removing from the Chrysanthemum plot, so much so that he continuously ended up dangerously and somewhat ironically close to damaging the small, white buds he was trying to protect.

It could’ve been anywhere between half an hour and three days before Brendon was finally drawn out of his thoughts by a long shadow suddenly appearing beside him. “Let me guess— he doesn’t like the color,” he said wryly, assuming that the shadow was Spencer coming to tell him that the purple roses he’d picked out to sufficiently spruce up Ryan’s “drab” room were inadequate.

However, much to Brendon’s surprise (as well as embarrassment), the voice that replied was in fact light, feminine, and preceded by a small giggle that certainly did not belong to Spencer. “I know nothing of my brother’s color preferences. But judging from his general personality, I’d assume you are correct.”  
“Z!” Brendon exclaimed, whipping his head around to grant her his focus in the hopes that it would make up for his unintentionally rude greeting.  “How was your dress fitting?”

She spent a moment gazing down at Brendon with an amused smile on her face before replying, seeming to enjoy witnessing his awkward faltering. “Predictably dull,” she said finally, “But there are worse predicaments.”

Brendon pictured little Bandit Way, with her knobby little knees hidden behind even one of the no doubt countless layers of skirts Z had just been made to try on. He could practically hear the delighted giggles echoing in his ears. “There certainly are,” he conceded. Displeasure was a subjective emotion.

Z dipped her head in a graceful nod, and it seemed to express something somehow deeper than mere agreement, as if she truly understood the sentiment behind Brendon’s reply. Before Brendon could fully analyze her expression, however, she looked away in order to gaze around the garden, her eyes eventually settling on a nearby flowerbed.  “Those are tiger lilies, yes?” she inquired, gesturing to the flowers in question.

Brendon glanced over at them. Though they were still in the process of growing, their buds had recently begun to open, revealing sets if pointed orange petals. Brendon nodded his confirmation. “Imported straight from who-knows-where.”

“Often thought to symbolize wealth and pride.” Z recited the words as if they were straight out of some horticulture book; they probably were. It was only in the second part of her statement that she put meaning into it, letting slight amusement seep into her tone as added, “Rather fitting, don’t you think?”

Brendon blinked. “I… I suppose it is.”

Z continued to watch the flowers with slight crinkles at the corners of her eyes just long enough for Brendon to turn back to his work. Almost as soon as he did so, however, she spoke again. “I know you’ve been venturing outside the castle.”

Any emotion in her tone was masked by practiced neutrality and matter-of-factness, which made the words all the more jarring. Brendon froze, a halfway-pulled weed remaining limp and forgotten in his hand as his entire body tensed up. Once he’d regained at least a semblance of his ability to breathe— though it still felt as if he’d been hit by a chariot— he turned around slowly, forcing himself to meet Z’s gaze. Her expression was suddenly solemn, with all the warmth it had held only moments before suddenly drained from it, though he wouldn’t call it quite cold or angry— simply matter-of-fact, with a tinge of grimness. “How did you…” he finally managed to stutter, “who told you?”

“Educated guess.” Much to Brendon’s perplexedness, a hint of a smile pulled at her lips, and there was a glimmer in her eyes that was almost conspiratory, as if she were about to tell Brendon a secret. Indeed, she leaned forward as she spoke, and her voice was significantly hushed as she continued, “You haven’t exactly been the most subtle with your questioning.”

Brendon sucked in a breath, mentally cursing himself for taking so many risks in his recent conversations. Oddly enough, however, Z didn’t seem to be taking his disobedience very seriously— there had been an sense of playfulness to her tone, as if the driving force behind her secretive manner were not truly fear of being caught, but rather amusement, though Brendon couldn’t fathom what it was directed at.

Probably noticing his conclusion, Z smiled warmly and pulled the splayed-out fabric of her dress in closer to her legs so as to leave an empty space on the bench. “Sit.”

If anything, that only confused Brendon more, but he obeyed, carefully positioning himself so as to not disturb Z’s skirts. He still half-expected her to explode at any moment— after all, he had deliberately disobeyed her father’s orders. Surely, as a princess, she would not abide by blatant disloyalty to the crown.

But, as strange as it was, Z remained as calm as ever. “My brother is…” she began before hesitating. She started swinging one of her legs back and forth and staring rather intently at a nearby rosebush as she spoke, and Brendon realized that she was choosing her words perhaps even more carefully than he was. “He’s not a bad person, but sometimes he can be…” she let out a sort of half-laugh, more of a sharp huff of exhalation than anything else, that seemed to come from a place of more tension than humor, “ignorant.”

It was only after she finished speaking that she turned to face Brendon, but once she did, her gaze was obviously expectant of a response, and intense enough to make Brendon’s slowly stabilizing heartbeat speed up all over again. He cleared his throat. “Yes… I, uh, guess you could say that.” Was it still wrong to speak negatively of a member of the royal family if another member seemed to be urging him to?

Much to Brendon’s relief, Z simply nodded and turned back to the flowers. “What you were asking today, about taxes and everything… he doesn’t understand the true weight of that money. And I won’t pretend that I do either.” She lifted her gaze to meet Brendon’s, and there was a ferocity there; a determinedness that made Brendon realize just how fortunate it was that she had been born before Ryan. “But I’d like to.”

Brendon’s eyes widened. “Do you mean you _want_ me to-”

“I am not _requesting_ that you do anything,” Z contradicted, “To do as such would be a direct disobedience of my father’s orders. I am simply… expressing a desire.” She turned her head back towards the garden, and it occurred to Brendon that she somewhat resembled a swan with her elegant, straight-backed posture and smooth, perfectly poised movements. “What you choose to do with that information is out of my hands.”

“...I see.”

“However-” she rose to her feet, sweeping a gentle hand across her skirts to brush off any acquired dirt as she did so “-should you ever run into trouble during an unsolicited attempt to fulfill said desire, perhaps your punishment could be… lightened.”

“I-” Brendon stuttered out, but found he had somehow both too much and too little to say.

Besides, Z clearly had no interest in continuing the conversation. Before Brendon could further his attempts to come up with a coherent sentence, she stretched a dainty arm out in his direction. “Walk me to the great hall, will you? Lunch should be served soon.”

**< <>>**

Other than the throne room, the Great Hall was probably one of the most blatant and ostentatious displays of wealth in the entire castle. Everything— including the doors used to enter it— was massive, as if the room at been built for creatures out of a fairytale instead of humans. Even the various wall decorations appeared disproportionately large; the polished swords and shields looking much too heavy for anyone to actually carry into battle, the helmets and chestplates too large to fit on actual humans, and the ornate tapestries wide enough to carpet Brendon’s entire cottage. The family crest, painted front and center on the wall opposite the door, are no exception— Brendon’s fairly sure that, were he able to stand with his feet at its base, the top would still be far out of his reach.

Of course, the real centerpiece of the room was the table, and it most certainly did not disappoint. Brendon had never actually bothered to count, but he estimated that at least twenty people could sit on either side of it— it was so enormous that he was convinced it was built inside the hall itself, because there’s no way any number of men could carry a table that big more than a couple of feet. Despite its age (the table had been in the castle for at least as long as Brendon had, and he suspected much longer), it was still in what seems to be perfect condition; the wood still a rich, dark brown, unaffected by any fading or staining, and the intricate carvings decorating the legs and sides sharp and exact, despite years of rubbing fingertips threatening to wear them down.

The only other pieces of furniture in the room that even came close to the table in terms of grandiosity were the chairs that surrounded it. They stood ridiculously tall, so much so that the backs of them towered over the heads of anyone sitting who sat in them, and so profusely carved that they ended up drawing focus away from whoever happened to be using them anyway. In fact, the only person Brendon had ever met that wasn’t completely dwarfed by these chairs was King George II himself, who was, at that moment, seated at the head of the table, beckoning him and Z over to the monstrous display of food laid out in front of him, which was so large that the four people it was prepared for couldn’t possibly hope to finish all of it in an entire day, much less a single meal.

Yes, King George’s broad, muscular figure, coupled with the great assertiveness of his personality, most certainly made that ridiculous chair seem more reasonably proportioned, but what they dwarfed to an even greater extent was Ryan, who was at that moment seated beside his father, picking boredly at the embroidery on his shirtsleeves. Of, course, Ryan looked tiny no matter what happened to be in his proximity, but it bordered on comical when it came to those chairs, and the presence of his father only added to the hilarity. Despite how similar they looked in other regards, if King George were a tree, reaching tall and formidable up to the sky on a massive trunk layered in a thick coat of rich, sturdy bark, Ryan’s narrow, angular form amounted to nothing more than a single twig lying among his protruding roots.  

It was funny; it was no secret that King George disapproved of his son’s rather disappointing waifishness, but it sort of worked in his favor. Ryan was an accessory, simply a different manifestation of the power held his father’s many capes or the jewel-encrusted clip holding his back, his smallness serving the sole purpose of making King George appear more massive and foreboding.

“Elizabeth, Brendon! I was just going to send for you. Sit— I have an announcement that affects you both,” King George greeted, much to Brendon’s confusion. He felt his heart skip a beat, his paranoid mind immediately jumping to the conclusion that King George had somehow learned of his forbidden adventures beyond the castle walls. But no— that would be ridiculous. If that were the case, Brendon would likely have been hauled off to the dungeon already. He glanced at Z, hoping for some reassurance, but found his surprise and trepidation mirrored in her, though she was probably masking hers much more effectively. Though subtle, there was a certain look of curiosity in her face as she made her way over to the seat across from Ryan and lowered herself gracefully down into it, with Brendon taking the seat beside her.

Once they were settled, King George reached for the centerpiece of the meal— a large platter piled high with what Brendon couldn’t help thinking was enough lamb to feed Sarah’s entire village— and began lifting hefty slices onto his own plate with a massive silver serving fork, indicating that it was appropriate for the others to follow suit. Brendon chose to start with a few potatoes, finding himself suddenly not all that hungry.

“It’s a bit short notice,” King George began as he placed his fifth and final slice of lamb on his plate and moved on to serving Ryan a few (an action which Ryan did not seem all that happy about). “But Queen Eleanor of Saltar will be arriving a week from tomorrow for an extended stay in the castle before Elizabeth’s ball.”

Brendon resisted the urge to let out a sigh of relief that it wasn’t something more pressing. The news did indeed pertain to him, but barely— he would simply have to take his meals in the kitchens for a few weeks while Queen Eleanor was visiting, as it would be rather improper to bring a servant to the same table as visiting royalty. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Z as well looked fairly unaffected by the announcement, nodding her acceptance as she bit into an almost perfect cube of lamb.

Ryan, however, was a different story. As soon as his father had mentioned Queen Eleanor’s name, he’d suddenly stopped staring disinterestedly down at the small mound of lamb on his plate and looked up like a startled horse. King George seemed to notice this as well, and his tone took on a hint of sternness as he added, “Her youngest daughter, Keltie, will be visiting as well.”

As if on cue, Ryan’s fork fell to his plate with a clang as he let go of it in favor of crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in his chair, his brows already furrowing to form a hard, stubborn line above his eyes. King George’s expression remained firm and placid, but he sounded more than a little exasperated, though unsurprised, when he addressed Ryan’s obvious distaste for his statement. “Have you something to say, Ryan?”

“Playing stupid isn’t going to make your little ploy any less obvious, father,” Ryan replied scathingly. Brendon sucked in a breath— he didn’t even want to imagine the punishment _he_ would receive if he were to say such a thing to the King— and even Z raised her eyebrows slightly.

King George, however, remained unruffled. “Perhaps that insult would’ve been more effective if there were any actual evidence backing it up,” he said calmly. “If only I’d raised a more mature son, who would know how to voice his grievances like a real prince. Maybe then people would listen to him.”

By the end of his father’s mockery, Ryan was full-on glowering. At first, Brendon felt the corners of his lips creeping into an amused smirk; as a self-titled professional nuisance to Ryan Ross, he had to respect a job well done. The resulting pouting would no doubt be a satisfying event.

Surprisingly, however, Ryan didn’t reply immediately, and, though his nostrils definitely flared for a moment, he remained remarkably composed. When he finally did speak, his voice was steady and even-toned, with not even a hint of whining evident. “Fine.” He stood up, and again the movement was shocking in its lack of harshness— Brendon found that, as soon as he’d seen Ryan shift his weight to his feet, he’d subconsciously prepared himself for the unpleasant screech of wooden chair legs chafing raucously against the stone floor as the seat was sent lurching backwards, but instead the movement was controlled and slow enough to keep the sound of Ryan’s chair being pushed backwards to a short, soft scraping.

Once on his feet, Ryan could at least give the illusion of towering over his seated father— he was skinny, of course, but he’d hit a growth spurt about a year back and made it to a reasonable height (which had arguably done him a disservice in effectively stretching out what little bulk he had on his body, but at the moment it seemed to be working in his favor). He tilted his head downwards to meet Kind George’s gaze and said— no, _proclaimed_ —  “I’m not marrying princess Keltie.”

The words were still eerily calm, but there was a weight behind them heavy enough to sink an entire naval fleet. Brendon glanced sideways at Z to find that even she looked taken aback, her normally smooth skin folding into a deep crease between her eyebrows as she watched her brother. So it wasn’t just Brendon, then— this was unexpected for her, as well.

King George sat in silence for a moment, steadily holding Ryan’s gaze **.** At first, Brendon was sure he was going to hit him; it would be so easy for King George to lift one beefy hand and swing it across Ryan’s jaw with a smack that would send his slight frame sprawling. To Brendon’s knowledge, King George had never been violent before (to his children, at least— he was apparently quite a ruthless commander in the war with the Rebels), preferring to remain a calmly unflappable authoritarian, but Ryan had also never reacted to anything this way before, so by this point it seemed that anything was possible.

As it turned out, when King George finally replied, his response was verbal, not physical. He raised a thick eyebrow as he spoke, and both his words and facial expression were oddly nonchalant, as if he and Ryan were discussing something as casual as their preferences on a new tapestry. “I don’t recall requesting that you do so.”

Ryan held his ground despite his father’s obvious attempts to diffuse the situation. “It’s what you want to happen,” he said accusingly.

King George leaned forward in his chair, finally ending his staring contest with Ryan in favor of gazing out thoughtfully over the table. “It would be… convenient, yes, and I’m sure it would make her very happy, but-”

“But what, father? Why do I refuse to marry her, hm?” Ryan interrupted sharply. _Now_ he sounded more Ryan-like; Ryan with his emotions that burned like straws of hay— quick to ignite and bright enough to demand attention in the moment, but even faster to burn out and be forgotten. He let his body flop back down into his chair, though he continued to stare at King George, his lips curving into a sneer. “I’ll bet you can’t even say it out loud.”

King George looked back at Ryan, still levelheaded as ever, though there was an understandable stoniness in his tone when he said, “But Eleanor is coming here to talk about a possible spread of rebel sentiment near our shared border, and nothing more. That was how I planned on completing that sentence, and never any other way, so I would _prefer_ if you didn’t make inaccurate assumptions based purely on your own vulnerabilities.” He fixed Ryan with a stern glare for a few additional seconds as if to put him firmly in his place (which, to an extent, worked— the smug expression of victory on Ryan’s face was soon replaced by a frustrated scowl) before turning to face Brendon and Z’s side of the table, immediately dropping his cold demeanor for a more pleasant, though still matter-of-fact one. “Now, Brendon, speaking of our visitors, I expect the beds beside the main doors to be filled before they arrive, as well as for there to be bouquets waiting in the guest rooms.”

Brendon nodded hurriedly, his heart hammering anxiously in his chest. “Of course, your majesty.”

Ryan, however, was not satisfied with this exchange, despite it having virtually nothing to do with him. “He hasn’t even planted anything there yet!” he exclaimed, crossing his arms over his chest, “How do you expect him to grow entire beds of flowers in eight days?”

Brendon shot a worried glance at King George, hoping he wouldn’t take Ryan’s retort as an expression of Brendon’s feelings. “No, no, it’s fine. Really. I can just transplant a bush or two from the back garden. It’s no trouble,” he insisted.

King George nodded his firm approval. “Good.” He paused to squint for a deeply uncomfortable moment at something just above Brendon’s eyes before adding, “And cut that hair before they arrive.”

“Of course, sir,” Brendon replied. In that moment, he probably would’ve agreed to jump off of the closest turret if it would end the conversation— and besides, his hair, which was just beginning to cover the top halves of his ears, had indeed gotten rather long for a servant.

Much to his vexation, however, Ryan felt the need to express his opinion on this ruling, as well. “I don’t think he needs to, actually. It looks good like this,” he said, his gaze joining his father’s above Brendon’s forehead. Brendon felt his cheeks heat up, not so much at the compliment itself as at the sizable amount of attention being suddenly directed at his physical appearance.

“ _Ryan_ ,” King George said in the same tone a one would use to urge an enemy to stand down lest they enter a fight they would most certainly lose; a threat dressed up in the much more attractive clothes of mercy.

Despite this, Ryan continued to plow recklessly— or, as he would probably claim, fearlessly— ahead. “What, I’m not allowed to say his hair looks nice? His damn _hair_ , for heaven’s sake. I’m not even talking about him as a whole.”

“ _Ryan…”_ this time it was Z who uttered his name in a warning tone, though hers sounded more like a genuine caution.

Ryan’s mouth contorted into an ugly smirk. “Does it scare you?,” he said, his voice coming out in a harsh crescendo, “That I could be flirting? That maybe when I say his hair looks nice, it could mean that I want to run my hands through it as he wraps those full lips of his around my-”

“Ryan!” Brendon winced at the loud scrape of heavy chair legs dragging across the stone floor as King George rose abruptly to his feet. Now dwarfing Ryan even more noticeably than before, he slammed one large hand down on the table, sending his own fork clattering uselessly to the ground, and a nearby plate of vegetables dangerously close to following it.

Not to be deterred, however, Ryan stood up as well, and brought his own hand down beside his forgotten plate with nearly the same effect, which was quite impressive considering his arm was about a fourth of the size of his father’s. “I like  _men_ , father! I like their bodies and their voices and how their skin feels under my tongue and I’m never going to be your perfect little prince who _conveniently_ matches up with a perfect little princess because _I. Like. Men._ ” By the time Ryan was finished, his chest was heaving like he’d just tried to outrun a horse, but there was a smile on his reddened face. The pure power that seemed to exude from him felt strong enough to make even the most valiant of knights shake in his boots. “Not gonna say anything? I suppose that’s what you do best.”

The silence that fell after that statement felt like the last few seconds before the end of the world; like being buried underground with just enough light to see the countless pounds of dirt an instant away from crashing down and filling your lungs. For a moment, King George glared into his son’s defiant eyes with anger that could turn back an entire army. Astoundingly (and yet somehow not surprising at all), Ryan stared straight back, holding his ground with his bony hands clenched into fists at his sides. In that instant, they were not a bickering father and son, but two forces of nature— an ancient tree and a lightning strike, a sand dune and a tidal wave, a great river and a boulder blocking its flow.

And then King George, in all his glory, sat down.

The thump of his heavy body making contact with the chair was enough to bring an end to the silence, though it didn’t do much to diffuse any of the tension in the room. He stared down at the table for a moment, and by the time he looked back up at Ryan, his face was a mask of perfect serenity. “I’m glad you could get that out of your system before our guests arrive,” he said plainly.

Ryan let out a disgusted scoff and whirled around to face the opposite side of the room, where the doors were located. “I think I’m done here. C’mon, Bren.” Brendon hesitated, shooting a nervous glance towards Z and King George; in the event of an argument between royal family members, wasn’t it his duty to side with whoever had the highest authority, and therefore against Ryan?

But then the prince in question stomped an impatient foot loudly on the stone floor, causing Brendon to jump in his seat. “I said _come_ ,” he repeated, his tone still uncharacteristically heavy and forceful.

Brendon didn’t have to be told again.

Ryan burst through the Great Hall doors like an angry horse with its stall door left open. The two guards on duty outside appeared noticeably stiffer-postured than usual, as if they were tensing up— Brendon assumed they’d heard at least some of the events within the room. Ryan whirled around to face one of them. “You,” he said, jabbing a commanding finger in the guard’s direction, “Where’s Spencer?”

“H-having lunch in the kitchens, as far as I know, your highness,” the guard replied, dipping his head in a hurried bow as he spoke.

“Get him,” Ryan demanded. His tone sounded somehow different from when he ordered one of the servants to fetch him a particular book or article of clothing; that one, while still authoritative, always had a bit of a drawl to it, as if he were putting on a sort of show for whoever happened to be watching. This one, on the other hand, was almost frightening in its seriousness, and Brendon thought that, in that moment, if Ryan had run outside and told the heavens to split open in the mightiest thunderstorm ever brewed, the sky itself would’ve bent to his will.

The guard visibly winced. “I… I’m not supposed to leave my post,” he said, uncertainty clogging his throat and causing the words to come out in an ungraceful stammer.

“You’re also not supposed to disobey a direct order from a prince,” Ryan spat. The guard hesitated momentarily, but it took only a few seconds of being the sole object of Ryan’s fiery glare for him to give a quick nod and start hurriedly off down the corridor.

Once the guard was gone, Ryan continued to stare fixedly at the spot where the guard had been standing, his expression unreadable. His anger was still evident, though it seemed somehow confused; lost, almost, without an available outlet. “Ryan…” Brendon began, racking his brains for the right words to calm Ryan down (which was, admittedly, a near-impossible task, as any perceived patronization would no doubt push him even farther over the metaphorical edge).

“Don’t do that,” Ryan replied sharply, whirling around to face him before Brendon could even attempt to get another word in. He had his back arched in a way that made him seem bigger than he actually was, and there was suddenly Brendon could see the anger Spencer had mentioned; something much darker and deeper-seated than his typical, short-lived bursts of frustration. Evidently, it was no longer directionless.

Brendon took an instinctive step back, as Ryan’s anger seemed to resonate off of him in waves which only got stronger when he focused his energy on Brendon. “Do what?”

‘ “Use a tone like that. Like I’m being unreasonable.”

“Ryan, you _are_ acting a bit _-_ ”

“I said _don’t!_ ”

Silence fell again, and Brendon felt that he couldn’t have moved a muscle if he tried. Slowly, however, the tension in Ryan’s shoulders began to release, and a good portion of the anger drained from Ryan’s face, retreating back to whatever mental prison he kept it hidden in. He took a step forward, removing the extra space created by Brendon’s earlier defensive backstepping. “And don’t cut your hair,” he said, his voice not necessarily soft, but much gentler than it had been mere moments before, “My father’s just trying to exert his power over you.”

It was only after Brendon opened his mouth that he realized he’d been biting his lip. “I can’t just-” he began.

“You’re using that tone again.”

Brendon fell silent and forced himself to stare down at the floor, not wanting to risk even looking at Ryan in his current state. With the only discernible sound in the corridor being Ryan’s breathing, Brendon found himself listening rather intently to the progression of it; starting out in fast, angry huffs but slowly drawing out into more relaxed, regular sets of inhales and exhales. It was during the latter end of that spectrum that Brendon felt warm fingers encircling his wrist, and looked up, startled, to find himself caught in direct eye contact with Ryan.

At first, Brendon’s instincts told him to look away, but there was something in Ryan’s eyes that held him there; some sort of inscrutable power that grabbed ahold of Brendon’s attention and refused to relinquish its grasp **.** Brendon thought he could have stood there for the rest of his life— not because he particularly wanted to, but because that mysterious power had taken control of not only his mind but his entire body as well, keeping him locked firmly in place.

But just as he began to think that he may truly be stuck there with Ryan till the end of time (but somehow not all that upset about the prospect), Ryan looked away sharply, pointing his gaze downwards at Brendon’s wrist, where Ryan’s fingers still rested. He took a slow breath, and Brendon could not only hear it but _feel_ the exhaled air on his cheek.

Ryan continued to stare down at where his pale skin met the more golden tone of Brendon’s as he began to speak, his voice soft but still holding enough power and urgency to move a mountain. “You were raised in this castle. Raised by _my_ side. And every privilege granted to me should be just as much-”

Brendon could tell where the somewhat peculiar statement was going, though he found himself wanting to hear the end anyway, if only to confirm that Ryan was indeed expressing such an oddly class-conscious sentiment— to say that was unexpected from him was an understatement. However, Brendon’s wish was never granted, as the sentence was cut off by a voice sounding from the other end of the corridor. “Ryan?”

The instant the sound reached his ears, Ryan tore his hand away from Brendon’s wrist and whipped around to face the source of the noise. Brendon could only fully glimpse his face for half a second as he turned, but he could’ve sworn that the expression flashing across Ryan’s face was one of panicked guilt, like a child who had just been walked in on while stealing cookies from the kitchen at night (which had certainly _never_ happened to Brendon, Ryan, and Z when they were younger).

The speaker turned out to be Spencer; Spencer, who made his way calmly down the corridor and planted himself firmly in front of Ryan. Once he’d properly asserted his presence in the room, he gestured at the guard Ryan had shouted a few minutes previously, who had scurried in behind him. “Kenny tells me you yelled at your father.”

Ryan shrugged, though the sudden nonchalance clearly served as a screen with which to conceal his true feelings on the subject. When he spoke, the halting, oddly emotional tone he had used only moments before had completely drained from his voice, leaving only a cold, guarded statement of belief that almost dared the listener to contradict it. “He deserved it.”

The corners of Spencer’s mouth curved up into a small, amused smile. “I suppose I’ll be getting an earful of it up in your room?” he said, a hint of teasing apparent in his voice.

Ryan raised an eyebrow challengingly. “Would you prefer I find a more willing listener? I’d imagine Brendon here would be happy to listen to my ranting.”

“Brendon actually has work to do, thanks,” Brendon interjected. It wasn’t a lie, of course, but this also seemed like a moment he shouldn’t let himself disrupt.

However, eavesdropping did not count as disrupting, and as he started off down the hallway, the sounds of their receding voices wandered into his ears. _“I’m serious, I could find another servant if you don’t think you have time to listen to me.”_

_“As if you’d last a week without me.”_

_“Now you’re just being cocky.”_

_“Oh, I’m sorry- who did you ask for the second you left the Great Hall?”_

Brendon felt a warm smile spread across his lips at their familiar banter and tried to ignore the odd tingling sensation in his wrist, as if the ghost of Ryan’s hand were still clutching onto it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly it's midnight and there are some sentences in there i'm not in love with but this chapter was already way overdue


End file.
